New app in Phoenix promises discounted food, reduced food waste - Arizona's Family

Discounted food available in Phoenix-area through new app

New app in Phoenix promises discounted food, reduced food waste

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — The menu at the Giving Tree Café in Phoenix is full of organic, plant-based cuisine, all carefully crafted in the restaurant’s busy kitchen.

“We cook in small batches,” said Lanly Le. “Our food is made fresh and we go through all of it pretty quickly.”.

But sometimes, there are leftover ingredients, so this restaurant is selling the extras on an app called Too Good To Go, which officially launched Wednesday in the Phoenix area. The restaurant typically has enough ingredients to sell three surprise bags daily.

Le showed an example of a bag that costs about $5 and included a deconstructed spring roll salad bowl and a slice of blueberry cheesecake pie. “It’s not perfectly cut at the bottom, so we’re not going to serve it to a guest, but it’s still delicious,” Le said. “If we have a little extra, a little bit of this, this and this, we can put it together in a bowl and make sure it gets out to someone, and they can enjoy a meal.”

The goal of Too Good to Go is to reduce food waste. “What we are is a food app to help reduce food waste and help businesses make a little bit of money off that food while simultaneously helping consumers to get great food at a lower cost,” said the company’s Sarah Soteroff.

“Across the country, we waste 40% of the edible food that we produce every year. That’s a ton of food that just legitimately goes into the trash.” The waste adds up to about $2,000 a year for the typical family, according to Soteroff. According to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, food costs are up 2.6% year-over-year.

To use Too Good To Go, log into the app, set your location, and choose a restaurant or store where you want to buy food. “It can be anything from a convenience store at a gas station that maybe has milk or chips or juices. Those can go on the app. It can be something like a pizza restaurant. Those pizzas can’t stay under the heat lamp for more than three hours, so once that happens, the turnover usually gets thrown out. Put those onto the app, and people can buy them.”

The same goes for restaurant orders that get canceled after being prepared. “You’re not going to know the actual itemization of what’s in your surprise bag because it really does reflect the unpredictability of food waste, but what you will know is the category. You’ll know the original value amount, and then you’ll see the amount you pay, which is typically about one-third of the original value.”

You pay through the app, and the store or restaurant will tell you when you’re allowed to make your pickup. “Everything that’s sold on the Too Good To Go app is perfectly consumable, would have to meet the same safety standards that the food would have to meet if it were sold for full price,” Soteroff said.

Even at the same restaurant on the same day, each surprise bag is a little different, so you never know what you’ll get. Currently, about 75 stores in the Phoenix area partner with Too Good To Go. The company says it expects many more in the near future.

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