Innovation

Too Good To Go is a for-profit business headquartered in Denmark and was founded in 2015. It is an environmental service for the food and hospitality industry and the team has come up with an innovative system of doing business. Too Good To Go’s business model is to provide consumers an opportunity to buy discounted food that would otherwise be discarded. This helps combat food waste. Food waste is a huge social and environmental issue and by connecting restaurants that have a food surplus to consumers willing to purchase it, the company is reducing food waste. Recently the company was able to save 100,000 meals in a single day from going to the landfill.

Inspiration

Too Good To Go came about as the founders noticed perfectly good food was being thrown away too often. They asked themselves, “how can we save all this food being thrown out that is too good to go?” That is when they came up with the idea of connecting consumers to food surplus locations, including restaurants, cafes and bakeries. Simply put, they wanted to “connect the food with people who wanted to save the food.” The founders started by pitching their business model with local restaurants. Now they operate in 14 European countries and will soon expand into the U.S. market.

Overall impact

Over 88 million tons of food is wasted every year in the European Union and Too Good To Go wishes to combat this problem. It is a social impact company and one of the company goals is to educate consumers on how they can combat food waste in their daily lives. This is a win-win-win model of doing business: customers get to try new food at a discounted price while the suppliers recuperate costs on what otherwise would be waste, therefore, less food goes to landfills. Too Good To Go unites businesses and consumers in the fight against food waste.

Business benefit

Since Too Good To Go does not itself house any of the surplus food in its inventory, it does not have to worry about inventory costs. The restaurants that partner with them benefit from being able to sell excess inventory as opposed to throwing it out. Consumers who use the app get to save money by purchasing food from restaurants partnered with Too Good To Go. The government also benefits since any excess food sold is less waste they have to process. Too Good To Go’s business model is highly sustainable, and simply put, a win-win-win situation for all participants.

Social and environmental benefit

Currently, Too Good to Go has saved over 35 million meals globally from going to the landfill. This amounts to about 88,000 tons of C02 emissions saved. There are over 25 million users on the app. In the United Kingdom, Too Good To Go has 3,174 partner stores across the country while globally it has over 44,000 partners.

The mission of Too Good To Go is to reduce global food waste; one way the company achieves this is through education. The company is informing the average consumer and businesses how they can decrease and ultimately defeat food waste. The app and website have abundant information on how to reduce food waste and the benefits that come along with doing so. Too Good To Go also provides free tool kits for schools to get a head start in understanding how schools can decrease food waste and the importance of doing so. With that being said, Too Good To Go works toward the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of “zero hunger” because of its efforts to reduce food waste. The company also works toward the SDG for responsible consumption and production as it actively participates in the effort to reduce food waste in half by 2030.

Interview

Daniel Longholm, Global Education Manager