Greggs’ ‘magic bags’ milestone app-solutely brill
GREGGS has sold one million ‘magic bags’ of food packed with goodies including sausage rolls and doughnuts, helping to keep more than 6,000 tonnes of food from going to waste.
The Newcastle firm teamed up Too Good To Go, an app that is helping companies to prevent waste while also steering people to places looking to offload unsold food.
The social impact enterprise works with a host of firms including Starbucks, Morrisons, Costa, Waitrose, Spar, as well as local stores, on a mission to end food waste.
By downloading the free app, people can search for nearby businesses offering unsold items which they can then buy as a ‘magic bag’, filled with food at a third of its original retail value, to be collected at an allotted time.
Greggs‘ magic bags contain a mix of food including sausage rolls, wraps, cookies, sandwiches and doughnuts.
Gillian Long, the company’s retail operations director, added: “While we do everything that we can to redistribute surplus food to those in need, our partnership with Too Good To Go really helps to ensure we keep as much as possible from going to waste and continue delivering on our food waste commitments.
“As announced in the Greggs Pledge, we are committed to creating 25% less food waste by 2025 than we did in 2018, and we will continue to work towards 100% of excess food going to those most in need.”
Sophie Trueman, managing director for Too Good To Go in the UK and Ireland, said: “We’re thrilled to be partners with a British staple like Greggs and to have reached such an incredible milestone so quickly.
“I’m incredibly excited to see our partnership continue to flourish and rescue even more Greggs favourites from going to waste.”
Meanwhile, Greggs has opened its 400th franchise shop in North Yorkshire as it ramps up plans for growth.
The company now has more than 2,200 shops across the UK – and plans to reach at least 3,000 – and opened the landmark franchise shop in Selby with its newest franchise partner, Rontec.