In the US, we waste a staggering 40% of our food. Here’s how the Too Good to Go app can help you save money and reduce unnecessary food waste.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, between 30-40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste every year. This is the equivalent of about 133 billion pounds of food and 161 billion dollars. How can the Too Good to Go App help?
Food gets wasted in households, grocery stores, restaurants and other food-related businesses such as coffee shops and bars. The best approach to start reducing your food waste is by not generating it at home.
Some ways to do that are:
- meal planning and meal prep
- buying local produce
- storing food correctly
- only buying what you will eat
In this article, we will show you how you can go one step further and order cheap takeout food from your local restaurants, grocery stores, and other food businesses through the Too Good to Go App – and how the planet and your wallet can benefit.
How Does the Too Good to Go App Work?
Too Good To Go was created in 2016 in Denmark, and now it operates in 15 different countries. It made its way to the United States at the end of 2020, and it’s now serving major cities including New York, Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC and San Francisco.
It connects customers with restaurants, grocery stores and other food-related businesses with unsold food items. Through the Too Good to Go app, you can order their leftovers for only a few dollars and reduce the amount of food that gets thrown in the trash.
- Download the Too Good to Go App to your phone via App Store or Google Play.
- Once you have it, it will search by your location and and you can customize how far away you’d be willing to travel.
- When you open the app, you will see all retail businesses near you that are registered in Too Good to Go, and if they have any surplus to sell.
- Before you purchase anything, you will see the price and the items displayed, and when pick-up time is. For restaurants, bakeries and cafés it is usually before they close at the end of the day. However, grocery stores often have items that you can pick up throughout the day.
Why Surprise Bags?
Leftover food items vary day to day. So, when you order food in the Too Good to Go app it may come in a surprise bag. That means you’ll pay for a bag full of food, but you won’t always know exactly what is inside.
- For example, grocery stores often have food that is about to go bad and therefore can no longer be displayed in-store. You can order a bag of food for only a few dollars, pick it up before the store closes, and help reduce the amount of food wasted that day.
- A similar thing happens with restaurants, bakeries, and cafés. At the end of the day, you can purchase the surplus of food they already cooked that otherwise would go straight to the garbage.
This app is convenient for you and for stores and restaurants. They throw away less food and lose less money, and you buy leftover items that otherwise would be wasted — also for less money. According the the Too Good to Go App’s website, they have saved approximately 111 million meals since 2016.
Too Good To Go: Advantages & Drawbacks
According to FoodPrint.org, restaurants in the US generate between 22 to 33 billion pounds of food waste every year. But food waste has other effects beyond wasting what someone could have eaten. It is not only the food item itself that goes to waste, but also the water, labor and energy needed to produce, transport and prepare it.
By using the Too Good to Go app, you help save valuable food and resources. Furthermore, it allows you to order takeout food from restaurants, or surprise bags from stores all while on a budget.
One downside of ordering food through this app is that, because surprise bags are made of whatever is left at the end of the day, there is no way to account for dietary restrictions. This can be a problem, especially for vegans and vegetarians, and those who follow a gluten-free or dairy-free diets. For vegans and vegetarians, the best option is to order from plant-based restaurants.
Read more:
- Zero Waste Kitchen: 8 Steps to Producing Less Trash
- Healthy Meal Prep Ideas: Easy Meal Planning Tips
- Banana Allergy: Symptoms and What It’s Got to Do With the Latex-Fruit Syndrome
- Storing Food Correctly: 7 Tricks for Vegetables, Fruits and Leftovers
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