APP REVIEW: TooGoodToGo – eating leftovers and saving a fortune

TooGoodToGo was launched in 2015 by a group of friends in Denmark with a mission to save food, money and the planet.

The food app encourages restaurants to sell and users to buy end-of-the-day leftovers for incredibly low prices in order to fight food waste and divert one million meals from landfills in Europe to our stomachs.

This year there are 4,500 food businesses partnered with the app, having avoided in total 3,202 tonnes of CO2 emissions and saved 1,601,139 meals from being wasted, according to the Too Good To Go website.

Each restaurant lists how many leftovers they can sell for the incredibly low price.

The app is usable in Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh and London, as well as Norway, France, Germany, Switzerland and of course its country of origin, Denmark.

Each restaurant lists how many leftovers they can sell for the incredibly low price per night before closing, with a pickup time. Users pay for the meal before collection and they get a receipt that proves that the meal was purchased through the TooGoodToGo app.

In an attempt to take control of my finances, I tried the app. I found on it a Spanish tapas and Spanish wines restaurant, Pix Pintxos, down the road from where I live. I paid £3.50 and waited until my  collection time: 11.10pm – 11.30pm.

I stuffed my boxes to the brim, skilfully layering each bite on top of another to maximise space for more food.

Upon arrival, the restaurant had just closed and one of the employees told me to collect the next day. The app doesn’t take into account different closing times on different days for restaurants and so I took the initiative to check the restaurant’s closing time for the next day online with the plan of arriving half an hour before they were to shut.

[EDITOR’S UPDATE: TooGoodToGo has asked us to clarify that receipts are only valid for the day of purchase and participating restaurants are responsible for keeping their opening hours up-to-date on the app – thank you.]

The next night at Pix Pintxos, I was given two takeaway boxes and told to fill them with Spanish tapas. I couldn’t believe it: for only £3.50, I was grabbing all sorts of bites for a midnight feast. There was bread with parma ham, fried quail eggs and cheese, croquettes and interesting spreads on bread.

The staff suggested I didn’t take any fish bites since they were more likely to age quickly than most other foods. Everything I took tasted fresh and delicious.

I stuffed my boxes to the brim, skilfully layering each bite on top of another to maximise space for more food. It was delicious.

TooGoodToGo is a life changing app, not exclusive to anyone, and for everyone who wants to fight food waste. I’m moving flats next month and in order to save money, this app is going to see a lot of me!

Photo by Travis Yewell on Unsplash