Too Good To Go, the app that prevents food waste by setting users up with its iconic half-price "surprise" bags of surplus food, has a few recent surprises of its own: You can now snag TGTG bags from major national retailers like Whole Foods and Ikea.
And if you do, you'll be joining the 100 million people worldwide who use the app, a new record the platform just reached.
"We're excited about our growth in the U.S.," Chris MacAulay, vice president at TGTG, told The Cool Down. "We're profitable and growing fast — and very excited to … push sustainability to a much bigger scale."
Since it launched in Europe in 2016, TGTG has partnered with over 170,000 of the world's top restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores, connecting them to people around the globe who are looking to save money, reduce food waste, and maybe not have to think about what to cook for dinner once in a while.
We caught up with MacAulay during this year's Climate Week to learn about what makes TGTG's "surprise" bags such a good deal and what the company is up to next.
🥑 How it works
Once you download the free app, you'll be able to see what restaurants and grocery stores nearby are offering surprise bags of their extra food.
You can scroll through the options similar to how you'd use DoorDash or Uber Eats. Search for full meals, baked goods, vegetarian-specific options — even alcohol on occasion.
After you've decided what you want, just press "Reserve" and pay through the app.
The only thing left to do is head to the shop at your designed time … and then bon appetit.
💰 Savings per bag
The "average cost of a surprise bag is about $6 in the U.S.," MacAulay said. "And for that $6, you're going to get anywhere from $10 to $20 worth of value, so you're getting an incredible deal."
What you don't know, of course, are "the specifics of what's in the bag," he said. "We can't tell you exactly what's going to be in the bag because we don't know what the leftovers are going to be. We are effectively creating categories so you can get a baked goods bag or prepared foods bag, for example, and it's a great value."
And what's great for customers is great for businesses, as they can now sell products that were good enough to make and sell for full price in the first place but would otherwise be scrapped at the end of the day if they don't quite sell out.
❓ New places, new surprises
"We're the world's largest marketplace for surplus food," MacAulay noted, and TGTG's partners "range anywhere from your local bakery and pizza shop to grocers like Whole Foods."
"It's a super simple process to join our platform," he told us, but don't let that simplicity eclipse what a big deal TGTG's recent expansion into Whole Foods and Ikea really is.
🗣️ Which of these groups has the biggest role to play in reducing food waste?
🔘 Grocery stores 🛒
🔘 Restaurants 🍝
🔘 Individuals 🗑️
🔘 The government 👩⚖️
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
As of this summer, users can snag prepared food and bakery surprise bags at over 450 Whole Foods locations across the country. Prepared food bags may include soups and ready-to-eat meals priced at $9.99 for a $30 value. The bakery bags feature bread, muffins, scones, and cookies, priced at $6.99 for a $21 value.
In addition to helping customers get great deals on healthy food options, the new partnership also helps Whole Foods get closer to achieving its commitment to cutting its food waste in half by 2030.
And for users looking for Swedish meatballs at a discount, the new partnership with Ikea makes that craving solvable. As one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, Ikea has been using its heft to make a sustainable impact.
For example, about 40% of its meals are now plant-based around the world, the retailer's sustainability lead told TCD this summer, and they're cheaper than the meat-based alternatives. Ikea was also one of the first global companies to cut its food waste in half, and the new partnership with TGTG only pushes that success further.
🏆 Win-win-win
"At its core, we're trying to have a pretty magical experience relating to … how you eat, the food you eat, and how you think about consumption," MacAulay said.
As the switchboard operator between hungry customers and restaurants with too much food on their hands, TGTG can offer budget-friendly, delicious meals, save retailers money, and have a huge positive impact on the environment.
And every meal counts. That's because, in the U.S., around 40% of food goes unsold or uneaten, most of which then ends up in landfills. Not to mention that surplus food creates around 14% of the country's methane emissions — a potent greenhouse gas contributing to the rapid overheating of our planet — which the nonprofit ReFED estimates is equivalent to the pollution of 75 million cars annually.
Since the company launched, TGTG has rescued over 350 million meals from being tossed in the garbage.
💚 Let them cook
"Everybody's on a journey about understanding their relationship with the environment around them," MacAulay told us.
"The more we can pull people into understanding what it means to be thoughtful around the purchases you make — the reduction in how you eat and throw food away — is really the way to get where we need to go."
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