Too Good To Go food waste app saves San Francisco restaurant leftovers

The pound cake alone has a price sticker that says $ 13.99.

That day, the day I felt like I paid a small sum to rob a bank, I decided to get all of my meals (or at least my food for a 24 hour period) via the new Too Good To Go app, an anti-food waste company that helps ease the flow of excess food from restaurants and grocery stores to the general public for just $ 4.99 or $ 5.99 per “goodie bag” .

When I opened the app that morning, I had a choice of many restaurants and grocery stores in San Francisco, many of which I would describe as trendy, like Brandon Jew’s Mamahuhu and the Indie Superette. by Michael Mina. I decided to pick a few that I knew well, thinking it was my best bet to get a well-balanced meal day based on what I knew the restaurant was stocked with. I figured I’d have the House of Dim Sum dinner, the Daily Driver breakfast, make a Luke’s Local lunch, and a treat and maybe a loaf of bread from La Boulangerie.

I was very, very incorrect. You see, every establishment can give a customer whatever they want in a “goodie bag”. Sometimes the app can describe what’s likely to be inside (I’ve rarely seen it), but more often than not you just have to guess based on what they’re for. But what I was wrong about wasn’t necessarily the contents of the bag (obviously I expected Daily Driver to give me leftover bagels), it was the amount of food inside each bag.

While costing the customer $ 4.99, each bag is supposed to be worth at least $ 15 (or a $ 5.99 bag should be worth $ 18) and each bag I picked up had at least minus that, and most of the time a lot, a lot more. My plan for about three meals plus dessert actually subsidized meals for me and my husband all week.

At La Boulangerie Noe Valley, my bag included a banana pound cake, a large chocolate chip cookie, a raspberry financier and a baguette for $ 4.99 – probably the most on point at $ 15 that I have. was able to get by adding the taxes based on my calculations.

Upon picking up my dinner at House of Dim Sum, I am greeted with a giant take out container full of spring rolls, shrimp dumplings, jar stickers and jian dui, so packed that I share with my husband and it is enough for our two dinners – all for $ 5.99.

I ate the Luke’s Local sandwich for lunch the next day and used the pita bread to devour some hummus I had in the fridge. And I still had breakfast for the rest of the week – six bagels from Daily Driver which usually cost $ 3.50 per bagel. Not to mention the peppers, onion and garlic which I ended up using to complement a taco dinner later in the week or the baguette pieces I used to soak the pasta sauce during from another dinner and the many desserts that came from the different cookies and that very delicious £ 13.99 cake.

Food waste is a big problem nationwide, but especially in the United States. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, up to 40% of our food is thrown away in this country. A 2014 Food Waste Reduction Alliance study found that 84.3% of unused food in American restaurants ends up being thrown away and only 1.4% is donated.

Too Good To Go was born in Denmark and quickly spread to France, UK, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands in 2016. Co-founder Lucie Basch said she knew the key to involve restaurants would simplify the process. as possible, making the app easy to use and requiring no upfront commitment. There is no quota that a restaurant has to meet, so they can add food when they want and as often as they want.

The company takes a flat fee of $ 1.79 per purchase – which is quite high when you convert it to a percentage (around 35% for a $ 4.99 bag) but quite low when you consider that most otherwise all of the food would have generated the restaurant or store no income at all.

For Alexis Liu, owner of Beacon Coffee & Pantry, it’s a “win-win” for his small business in North Beach. Liu said that they almost always had some leftover food at the end of the day, even if it was just a bag of pastries, and that she was happy that she no longer had to worry about it. they are not wasted. She also said she believed it introduced them to new customers who may have never visited the store before but now know them and their products.

“Even though it’s only one bag that we sell and the actual amount we make from it [the app] is symbolic, it’s better than nothing and it’s better than anything that goes into a landfill, ”Liu said.

Basch said it’s a great value proposition for restaurants, and while it’s not something I initially thought about, I totally agree. I probably would never have bought Luke’s seed bread or that expensive pound cake, but now I might think twice if I was shopping in the store again.

Currently, Too Good To Go is available in New York, Boston, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Portland and Seattle, in addition to the Bay Area, and the goal is to continue adding more restaurants to across the Bay Area to the platform. . The company hopes to launch in Los Angeles by the end of the year. The company estimates that it has saved more than 72 million meals in 15 countries since its launch, which represents 250 million pounds of food.

Basch said she hopes restaurants and grocery stores can learn by participating in the app as well. If a restaurant finds, for example, that it always seems to have 10 baguettes left at the end of the day, maybe it could start baking eight less each day and see if that cuts its food costs.

I promise this post is not sponsored by Too Good To Go, but I was really shocked and delighted at how much food each “goodie bag” contained and how good it was. For consumers, there doesn’t seem to be much downside. Sure, I had a pear that was way too late to eat, but the grocery bag was already a lot cheaper, so I didn’t feel bad composting a pear that would have ended up being composted at the store. Picking up items on a limited time can be tedious (the store sets when they want – you can have as little as 15 minutes and up to several hours), but if you’re in an area with a lot of participating restaurants and you have a flexible schedule, it’s really not that hard.

The biggest obstacle for many will likely be complying with dietary restrictions. If you have an extreme allergy, Basch admits the app probably isn’t for you, as they can never guarantee what’s in a given bag. They have a filter for vegetarian dishes, but when I clicked on it most of the restaurants disappeared from my app. But, looking at my background, only one in four places had items with meat.

If you are on a budget, are passionate about reducing food waste, and aren’t a picky eater, this app might be exactly the win-win that it calls itself.