WITH shopping and takeaways at astonishing prices, Too Good To Go has taken the UK by storm.
But is the latest discount app hiding a dark side? Lucy Tobin finds out.
With three kids who gobble up my entire supermarket shop in about as long as it takes me to unpack the bags, I’m always looking for bargain ways to feed my family.
So I’ve spent this month glued to one app: Too Good to Go.
It sells bags of leftovers from, restaurants and cafes at half the usual price or less — but with a catch: you have no idea what you’re going to get.
Some days it worked perfectly.
After I bought an M&S surprise bag in the app, the assistant let me follow her around the store (on a BP forecourt), picking my favourite five ‘yellow sticker’ goodies.
I opted for a couple of boxes of breaded cod, a tub of potato salad and steamed vegetables: family dinner sorted for just £4.
When I raved about it at the school gates, a mum friend downloaded the app in front of me, bought a Toby Carvery breakfast box for £2.79, and drove over at 11am to pick up a breakfast haul of six sausages, four bacon rashers, beans, tomatoes, an egg, mushrooms,
and hash browns. It made lunch for three – for under £3.
But other days I was left feeling ripped off.
At one pick-up – at fancy supermarket Waitrose, no less – I was handed some frozen egg fried rice and fish that had been sitting out on the counter and was already defrosted when I picked it up.
Too nervous about food poisoning to eat it, the £5 haul sadly went in the bin.
Luckily, though, the app refunded me when I complained.
A Waitrose spokesman said: “That petrol station is run and operated by Shell and it’s employees – not Waitrose. We just provide a selection of products to their store.”
A Shell spokesman said: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will work with the site to look at ways to improve delivery.”
Jumping on board the Too Good to Go community, I was shocked to see how some stores use the app to hand over rotten food to shoppers.
Mum Carly Guthrie, from Castlereigh in Northern Ireland, paid £4 to pick up a box from local grocery Epicurian in Holywood – but was given two cut-open grapefruits, a melon covered in white mould, bashed-up fizzy pears and the end of knob of a cucumber.
“The whole lot went in my bin, I wouldn’t have let anyone eat it,” she explains.
EVERY day huge amounts of food is thrown way as supermarkets get rid of food that's about to go off, and restaurants and cafes don't toss out things that aren't fresh.
Too Good to Go is an app that is trying to stop that.
Many restaurant, café and food brands have partnered with Too Good to Go and will provide a “magic bag” of unsold food to users at the end of the working day.
Download and set your location on the Too Good To Go app and you can choose from nearby stores listing their unsold food at a reduced price.
Listings show how much a bag of food costs and how many are left as well as where you need to pick it up.
You pay through the app and get given a slot before closing time to go and pick it up.
Looking for more apps to slash your costs? Here are some of our favourites.
Can you claim a refund?
If you have any order-related issue, you can contact Too Good To Go’s Customer Care team.
Simply reach out via the app by clicking “More” at the bottom right side of your screen > “Orders” > Click on the order you’re referring to.
They’ll then get in touch with you.
“I didn’t expect perfect food but I expected to be able to eat it.
“My husband picked up the box for me – I wouldn’t have left the shop with it.”
She did, at least, get a refund – but that didn’t cover the
wasted journey.
Epicurian declined to comment when approached by The Sun.
Dr Rimas Geiga, clinical nutritionist, sais: “My primary food safety concerns with these apps revolve around the potential for foodborne illnesses.
“When food is prepared and left unsold, its quality and safety can diminish over time.
“Critical factors such as temperature control, proper storage, and the duration the food has been left unsold play significant roles.
“If these parameters are not strictly monitored, there is a heightened risk of bacterial growth, which can lead to food poisoning.
“Ensuring that the food has been stored correctly and is consumed within a safe timeframe is essential.”
He added: “Upon receiving the food, consumers should inspect it for any signs of spoilage, such as off smells, discolouration, or unusual textures.
It says any products purchased on the app should be eaten “immediately after pick-up, and/or as instructed by the product label or the store.”
The app says shops and restaurants can cancel orders up to two hours before the pick-up time – so keep an eye on notifications before setting out.
Cancellations after that usually trigger a refund if you use the complaint link on the app.
Customers can also cancel orders up to two hours before the beginning of the agreed pick-up- or later if it’s due to ingredients, allergens or other labelling issues – but have to do so via the complaint link on the app.
The nature of leftovers mean it’s almost impossible to work with dietary requirements – but there’s a “Vegetarian” and “Vegan” filter in the app, under ‘Browse’ option.
“Reheating the food to the appropriate internal temperature (usually 165°F or 74°C) can kill most harmful bacteria, adding an extra layer of safety.”
A spokesperson from Too Good To Go said: “This isn’t the experience we want for our users while they try to save food from going to waste, which is why we issued refunds immediately on both occasions.
“Feedback was also shared with partner stores around food safety policies to prevent this from happening again.
“While these situations are of course disappointing, and we take them seriously, they represent a very small percentage of bags that we help our users to save every day.
“Over 40 per cent of food produced is wasted globally, and in the UK alone, Too Good To Go has helped save over 40 million Surprise Bags and works with more than 43,000 partner stores.
“Given the size of the food waste issue, we want our users to have a positive experience every time they decide to help the planet by using the Too Good To Go app.
“To achieve that, we take food safety and quality seriously and are committed to improving our service.”
After weeks buying meals, cakes, sandwiches and vegetables on the app, Lucy has worked out how to win at Too Good to Go:
Be cheeky. Remember – you get what you’re given. The whole point of the app is to stop food going to waste, so fussy eaters will struggle. But having said that, in my experience giving a big smile and saying that you really love beef, for example, or asking if it’s possible to avoid fish, staff are often happy to help. I bought a £5 surprise bag from Pret, but spotted a ham sarnie poking out the top. As I don’t eat pork, they quickly swapped it for a tuna melt. And if you’ve got kids, always take them with to pick-ups. My nine-year-old ended up bagging an extra tray of sushi on top of my £5 Tesco Too Good to Go deal, plus five extra cupcakes at a local bakery just because the assistant liked his football shirt.
Be ruthless on store rating. Users judge their hauls, and I found anywhere rated under 4 wasn’t worth it – stingy portions or poor choice. The reviews also help you work out if you’re likely to bag a meal, groceries or cake. Whenever I ordered from Costa and Starbucks I was
handed a load of cakes, when I really wanted savoury so I now avoid them. My local Morrisons store had a poor rating – so I stopped off on my way home from work at the 4.4 rated Camden branch, and was rewarded with a huge haul of fruit and vegetables still three days off their sell-by date: more than £25 of groceries for £3.09.
Complain if it’s no good. If your surprise bag isn’t worth the advertised value, or if the order is cancelled under two hours before pick up time, log a complaint with Too Good to Go. Just go to ‘profile’, click on the dodgy order, then ‘need help’. When I pointed out my defrosted
Waitrose fish and rice, I got a full refund the next day.
Don’t go (far) out of your way. Use Too Good to Go’s map function if you’ve got a journey coming up – it’s great for deals at stations, as long as you don’t mind eating breakfast for lunch or dinner. But don’t waste petrol money or transport fares just to get to a Too Good to Go outlet – it’ll almost always be cheaper to buy the food you actually want where you are.
Be imaginative. Sometimes you’ll pick up crazy volumes of food – use sites like lovefoodhatewaste.com to find ways to cook it. Phillippa Lovell popped into Aldi to pick up her £3.50 deal – only to be handed a box of 23 packets of radishes and two packets of bread rolls! “And I was speaking to a gentleman earlier who got a box full of bean sprouts from Aldi too,” she laughed. Another Aldi shopper reports picking up the same amount of bags – but of carrots. A third received 13 packs of lettuce. Even Peter Rabbit would struggle to get through that. But make soup, and share the haul with friends. In general, you’ll pick up a lot of carbs:
bagels, muffins, bread: freeze it all for future meals.
Pick your timing. Most stores offer a window of time for pick up – when you go depends on the store. I found Aldi wheels out a trolley full of boxes and you can pick the one you want, so getting there early means more choice. But local stores just want bare shelves, so being
the last to pick up my surprise bag meant it was bulging with cake.
To nab a popular bag – you’ve got to do your homework. The likes of Yo Sushi and Greggs sell out super fast. Always ‘favourite’ the stores you like most, and turn on notifications to learn when they’re being released. If you click on a sold-out bag, it will tell you when future bags will be available: go on the app a few minutes before this time to grab them.
