Apps aim to curb food waste
Companies say connecting buyers with uneaten edibles also combats climate change
Every Sunday at 2 p.m., Marisela Godinez, the owner of El Meson Tequileria, a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, used to fill a 12-gallon bucket, plus another half-bucket, with leftover food from the restaurant’s all-you-can-eat brunch buffet. “We threw out a lot of food,” she said.
But a few months ago, Godinez signed up to use an app called Too Good To Go. Now 10 customers pick up “surprise bags” of her leftovers for $5.99 each, and she sends far fewer scraps to the landfill or compost.
Around the country, apps that connect customers to businesses with leftover food have begun to spread. The concept is simple: Restaurants and grocery stores throw away huge amounts of food every day. Rather than trash it, apps such as Too Good To Go and Flashfood help businesses sell it at a reduced price. They claim that the businesses and buyers are helping the environment because the food would otherwise become food waste, a big contributor to climate change.
The apps, which make money by taking a portion of each sale, promote themselves with language that sounds more like a call to arms. “Fight against food waste,” reads the Flashfood description. The Too Good To Go promo calls users “food waste warriors.”
Food production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for between one-quarter and one-third of global emissions. Each step of the process releases carbon dioxide, methane and other planet-warming gases. When the food is wasted, so are those emissions. In addition, once unused food reaches landfills, it decomposes and releases more methane.
Launched in Toronto about a half-decade ago, Flashfood works with more than 1,400 supermarkets in the United States and Canada, including large chains like Meijer, Giant and SpartanNash stores. When food is nearing its expiration date, rather than throwing it out, retailers can scan products into the Flashfood system to be sold at about half price. Customers can browse the items through the app, purchase them and pick them up at a local store. Flashfood takes a 25% cut.
Josh Domingues, the company’s founder and CEO, acknowledged that he had recreated the clearance rack on people’s phones, but he said the presentation was key. “This food is not segregated in the back corner, that, like, almost makes you feel smaller for going to pick through,” he said. Instead, blue branded fridges sit in the front of grocery stores with signs encouraging people to help fight food waste.
Too Good To Go has tried to gamify buying leftover food. In the United States, customers in 12 cities can browse restaurants and stores, then reserve “surprise bags” that typically cost about $4 to $6 and contain food that would have been originally priced at roughly three times that amount. The bags can be picked up within a certain time window. Too Good To Go takes $1.79 per bag and charges partners an annual fee of $89.
Too Good To Go is more
popular in Europe, where it operates in 15 countries and has partnerships with international chains including Starbucks, Pret a Manger and Costa Coffee. In the United States, the company said it is continuing to expand and is currently piloting partnerships with Safeway and Panera.