Too Good To Go: an app to save money & reduce food waste - The Princetonian

It’s 6 p.m. and a bakery has to throw away a trash can full of day-old pastries. They’re a little stale, but not by much; the bakery only gets rid of the excess food because they’re no longer able to sell it, increasing food waste.

That’s where Too Good to Go comes in, a Denmark-based app founded in 2015 that allows businesses to sell mystery bags of unsold food at the end of the day at a discounted price. On Nassau Street, restaurants such as Le Kiosk, Milk & Cookies, Fresh Ó Tea, Maman, and Ficus Restaurant, Cafe, & Gallery participate in the service.

According to Too Good to Go’s website, over 100 million users and 170,000 businesses are signed up worldwide. The app has a niche but dedicated following, with Reddit pages to share and review mystery bag contents and a website outlining detailed reviews and alerts for businesses who are featured on the app. Beyond Nassau Street, popular chain restaurants in the Princeton area like Just Salad, Cava, and Pure Green all participate in the app, as well as grocery stores like Whole Foods.

I reached out to a few local restaurants to learn more about why they participate in the app. Ficus Restaurant, Cafe, & Gallery told me that they signed up a year ago because of their commitment to “the concepts of sustainable eating and living.” While students occasionally buy their mystery bags, it’s usually families who purchase them. In their bags, they typically include tea, boba, and leftover food from the restaurant kitchen or other events. Milk & Cookies thinks the app helps with “keeping inventory moving and reaching people.” They signed up for Too Good to Go’s service a few years ago when it expanded from New York City to Princeton.

To see if the bags are really worth it, I ordered one from Milk & Cookies, a local cookie shop with gluten-free and vegan options alongside their traditional cookies. A favorite spot for sweet treats, they also offer ice cream, lattes, hot chocolate, shakes, and brownies.

The hardest part was actually buying the bag — only a few bags are available at 6 p.m. most days, and they are bought almost immediately. I had to turn on notifications for the app to receive a reminder when the bags became available. With Too Good To Go, there are specific windows of time for picking up your order at a partner restaurant — I had to pick up my order from Milk & Cookies between 6 and 7 p.m.

Each business handles its Too Good To Go bags slightly differently. When I obtained one at my local bagel shop near Philadelphia, they put the bag together when I arrived, grabbing random extras of bagels, breads, and pastries. At Milk & Cookies, however, they pre-prepare the orders so that when you arrive for pick-up, there will be a neat little paper bag of cookies already waiting for you.

Inside the bag, they had packed six of their large, thin, chewy cookies, each a different flavor: double chocolate, chocolate chip, matcha, classic sugar, funfetti, and snickerdoodle. Despite being supposedly a day or two old, the cookies still tasted fresh with a soft texture and sweet, distinct flavors. At $3.25 a cookie, this bag would typically cost nearly $20. But through the app, it was only $6.

Too Good To Go is still a slight gamble — the food you receive could be a little too old and stale, and you have no control over what products you’re given in the mystery bags. If you’re picky with your food or have dietary restrictions, you might have issues with this platform since you can’t make special requests while ordering. For example, even though Milk & Cookies has gluten-free and vegan cookies, I wasn’t able to request those specifically. Even if such options were offered, they would most likely face cross-contamination with the other regular cookies that could be given in the bag.

Though not ideal for people with dietary restrictions or strong dietary preferences, Too Good To Go is a fantastic app that helps combat food waste. In America alone, one study from ReFED estimates that 11.4 million tons of food goes to waste each year from only restaurants. The app not only allows people to contribute to sustainable activity; it also draws new customers to local businesses and lets them try places that they’ve never eaten at before without spending a lot of money. Overall, Too Good To Go is an easy way to try new foods for less money — give it a try next time you’re on Nassau Street in the evening.

Lulu Pettit is a member of the Class of 2027 and a staff writer for The Prospect from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She can be reached at lp3153[at]princeton.edu or her Instagram @itslulupettit.

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