LUCIE LALANNE
Toulouse Business School
Odile Verdure Labeille
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The company is a hyper-local environmental social enterprise committed to reducing food waste. They help avoid 1,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions and cut 600 00 tonnes of food that is wasted in the UK restaurants.
Their main mission is to raise awareness about food waste, then to save money and protect the planet's resources for the future lives of our children.
How doe Too Good To Go do this? The application enables people to benefit from food for lower price because it would have been thrown away if no one would ask for it. Actually, it creates links between food shops owners and consumers. People choose which restaurant they want to go to, pay on the application and then come to pick up their food at the restaurant/food shop.
This is a good opportunity for people with low incomes to eat decently, and for food businesses to create value out of their leftover food. Thus, It is a win-win solution because both consumers and shop owners benefit from the action of the Too Good To Go application.
The action of Too Good To Go is a revolution in the food industry.
Why is this application a big revolution in the food industry ?
Actually, in France, food is a precious thing because the country is historically one of the best epitome of the best food. Indeed, French people tend to cook with natural products and make tasty things of them. Thus, they are more likely to accept the fact to eat leftover food (which come from good restaurants which use natural products) because they may think that wasting natural products is not a good situation. On the contrary, the Americans would find it harder to accept it as they have a completely different vision of food. They may think " they deserve better than leftover food". However, in France and in Europe more generally, one of the best cooking comes from what is left including the leftover food and the common products.
The founders were inspired from our environmental situation: in France, about 10 million tons of food are wasted every year which means about 29 kilograms per capita per year. In addition, according to the UNO, one third of resources from the worldwide agriculture is thrown away every year. On the other hand, 1 person out of 8 in the world is starving to death.
Food means also greenhouse gases: indeed, the food industry is one of the most polluting industry in the world. Thus, given that part of the production is thrown away, many gases are emitted all in vain.
Too Good To Go inspiration comes from all of these observations. We need to make something of all this food waste. Therefore, they had their brilliant idea of helping shop owners sell their unsold products and food.
Too good to go has a multidimensional impact. Indeed, it not only promotes not wasting food but enable people to benefit from good food at a lower price.
All the businesses have the opportunity to sell all their production instead of throwing part of it away. Thus, they lose less money than ever. Moreover, they improve their environmental image towards consumers.
Indeed, everyday, tons of fresh produces are thrown away by restaurants and food shops. This is not a good solution neither for the planet nor for the economy. Indeed, businesses lose a lot of money on this. Therefore, they would better sell their leftover food at a lower price than throwing them.
How does it work for businesses ?
Actually, this application is quite easy to use by both consumers and businesses. Indeed, for the latter, they just need to indicate the number of leftover food they have in the evening. The payment is made through the application. Consumers come and pick up their orders. They can choose their products or the business can just make a surprise box with many products that clients do not choose.
Then, businesses can also pay out their raw materials instead of throwing money by throwing their leftover food.
What is the benefit for Too Good To Go ?
This company takes a commission on every transaction made through the application.
Today's situation: people waste almost 40% of all the food we produce worldwide. In addition, 28% of our planet’s agricultural land is used to produce food that is not even consumed.
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Elise Garcia, Former Business Developer
Too Good to Go is a mobile application that place the lost value back onto food as something that should be eaten and not thrown away.
Through the application, people can benefit from low prices and good food.
Their mission is to raise awareness about food waste by making surplus food available for collection before a store closes its service.