How game changer app Too Good To Go plans to solve world’s food waste problem
Food wastage is trashing the environment, but sustainable food delivery app Too Good to Go might hold the solution. Described as a ‘win-win-win’ situation, Future 50 inductee Anoushka Grover explains why.
Launched in 2016, Too Good To Go is a game changer in the sustainability market
It’s hard to imagine that something so delicious could be so destructive. No, not to your waistline, I mean the food ‘waste’ that is directly responsible for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the answer to the world’s climate problem could be fixed by opening your gob? Well, actually... it can, according to the world’s largest B2C marketplace for surplus food, Too Good To Go – a digital alternative to ’skipping’, only less bin juice and more legal.
A game changer in the sustainability market, the sustainable food delivery app lets people buy surplus food and drink from pubs, restaurants, retailers and producers to stop it from going to waste, saving 100,000 meals every day.
“Customers pay with their magic bag, we take a small admin fee and the store gets paid the rest of the money,” explains Grover. “It’s a win for the store that gets the money for the food they’d have to throw away, and the customers get great food at a great price.” Win-win-win.
“And there isn’t anyone that’s doing exactly what we’re doing,” claims Grover, Too Good To Go’s former marketing manager and ‘waste warrior’. She recently left the company after nearly four years to join the menstruation company Dame. While sad to go, she leaves with the comfort that Too Good To Good is a drastically different company to the one she joined.
Since launching in 2016, Too Good To Go has grown exponentially. To put things into context, Grover was one of four employees in the UK office when she joined in 2017 – number 50 globally. In 2021, the company has just passed 1000 employees, with 5 million registered users across 15 countries worldwide. And things will only get bigger. Back in January, it landed an investment of €25.7m, which it said would go into expanding its operations, notably in the US market where 40% of edible food is wasted.
Grover explains that the app’s ’North Star metric’ is meals saved – of which it aims to save 1bn by the end of 2024 (it’s on 77.1m meals currently).
During her time as marketing manager at the app, Grover managed and facilitated a range of partnerships with national and international brands, which she says will play a large part in Too Good To Go’s 1bn meals target.
Earlier this year it teamed up with Gorillas, a new hyper-local delivery app that brings people groceries from businesses in their neighborhood in just ten minutes (or less). And like Too Good To Go, it’s super environmental, using electric bikes to do so.
“Gorillas is one of our newer partners. We’re working with them to make sure that they don’t have any food waste from their operation,” Grover details, highlighting the negative impact grocery stores have on the planet. “They have an abundance of food at all times. If you go to Tesco at 10pm, you expect to be able to pick pretty much any item you want, even though it’s 30 minutes before closing. We’re attuned to immediately having everything we want.”
This is why Grover says partnering with supermarkets is going to be huge for Too Good To Go as it continues to grow and save meals. “Supermarkets have huge distribution systems of food. So the more supermarkets that join the app, the bigger impact we’re going to have,” she insists, pointing to Morrisons, which has already become a major supermarket partner. “They have all 494 UK stores on the app, saving food every day. About 99.9% of the food that they put on the app gets saved, which is incredible because that’s impact at scale.
“That’s almost 500 stores putting on bags of food every single day being bought by customers. Having that next big supermarket rollout will be a big milestone for the business.”
Beyond partnerships with national and international brands, before leaving Too Good To Good Grover was actively encouraging brands to update their packaging for its ‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste’ campaign, which educated people on ‘Best Before’ dates.
“In January I led the marketing campaign for our ‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste’ campaign, which is an iteration of a project that we’ve launched in a few different markets,” she explains. “It’s all about best before dates and improving people’s knowledge on what to do with products when they pass their best before date.”
Encouraging less food waste, she recalls how she met with food producers from big food manufacturers, asking them to use the ‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste’ label on their packaging. “And it had a really big impact, with 7m reach on social on the first day,” she shares. So far the likes of Nestlé UK and Ireland, Arla, Bel Group, Danone, Emmi UK and Savencia have got on board.
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