Too Good To Go App: How To Get Cheap Food
Too Good To Go is a free app. It allows you to buy food that would otherwise be thrown away at a heavily reduced price. The app connects you to local restaurants, shops, bakeries and cafes that are offering their excess stock, or items reaching their best before, at a discount.
How does Too Good To Go work?
Too Good To Go aims to reduce food waste by partnering with restaurants, shops, bakeries and cafes to sell any excess food, or food nearing its best before date, at a reduced price.
It’s a win win, as the customer gets a bargain on food that would otherwise have been wasted.
Below is an outline of how to use the Too Good To Go app.
Download the app
To use Too Good To Go, you need to download the app. You can download it from the Google Play Store, or from the App Store.
Once you have downloaded the app, you need to accept the cookies, and sign up using your email address, Apple or Facebook.
Enter your location
The next step is to input your location. You can either select your current location, or a chosen other location.
Browse the selection
The food vendors you can choose to order from will depend on what is available in your chosen location.
If the app operates in your area, you should see a selection of restaurants, cafes, bakeries and shops you can browse through. You can find retailers including Costa Coffee, Wasabi, Pret, Londis, Upper Crust, M&S Simply Food and more, depending on what’s available in your area.
Choose and collect a magic bag
Once you’ve browsed the app and found somewhere you want to order from, you can reserve a bag of items. This is called a ‘magic bag’.
Once you have chosen the magic bag you want, you can reserve it and pay in the app. They usually cost around £3 to £9.
Once your magic bag is reserved and paid for, you will be given a pick up time, and then you can go and collect it. Upon pick up, they will scan your app as confirmation and you can take away your magic bag.
Example of a Magic Bag
Latest Deals helper Mia wanted to see how much she could save with Too Good To Go, so she bought a Magic Bag everyday for a whole week, Monday to Friday.
She managed to get Magic Bags from Rocky Cakes (a local cafe), Starbucks, GoPuff, Pret and Budgens. You can see from the photo she got a lot of items from groceries to cakes, and we’ll break down exactly how much she saved below.
So, the first magic bag came from a local cafe, Rocky Cakes. You can see at the front of the image, the cakes look delicious, and Mia worked out she got £9 worth of cakes for just £3.09, a saving of £5.91.
Next up was Starbucks, and Mia got four items with a total value of just over £13. She paid just £3.59, so ended up saving £9.41.
Mia then went for a bag of groceries, and ordered a Magic Bag from GoPuff. From the photo you can see she managed to get a lot in this one. Overall she made a saving of £6.35.
Pret was next on her list, and she managed to get a bag for £4. It included two of their delicious mac and cheeses which cost £6.95 each, so she saved almost £10!
Her final bag was more groceries, this time from Budgens. This one had fresh fruit, soup, and items from Yeo Valley and Activia. This was the best saving yet, and she saved just under £15.
With these five magic bags, Mia managed to save around £36. A great saving on food that otherwise would have gone to waste.
Too Good To Go review
| Pros | Cons |
| You normally get excellent value for money. You can get a whole bag of food for as little as £3. | You don’t know what you will get in your Magic Bag. It could be a good one, or you may get low cost items, or items you don’t like. |
| You’re helping to reduce food waste. | Magic bags are only available for pick up, not delivery. |
| The app is easy to use. | The items are usually at the end of their sell by date. |
| You can discover local gems you may not have known about. | Your choice of retailers will depend on where you live. |
Too Good To Go tips from Tom
In my experience, some magic bags are much better than others. My advice would be to try out a few different shops, cafes and restaurants, to see which ones near you give the best bags. When you get a good magic bag, make a note of where you got it from. Then you can create a list of the best places to order from near you.
Try not to be put off by the best before dates. Most of the time I’ll eat what I fancy on the day, and then freeze whatever’s left. If there are items that can’t be frozen or that you don’t want to eat, you can donate them or give them to friends and family.
I also recommend checking to see if Olio is available in your area. It is an alternative to Too Good To Go that offers free local food that would otherwise be thrown away.
FAQs
A brilliant app! Using it every week, mostly at local bakeries, but you can literally get any kind of meal and selection depending on the day and your location. The only recommendation I would have is to spot key places you already know or want to try and mark them as favourites so that you can more easily check if they have a too good to go bag. Also, some go super fast so remember to check the day before for any availability on the next day. Anyway, save money and enjoy!
Sounds like s brilliant idea that helps all. Not tried it yet but will download app and give it a go.
It's absolutely hopeless where we are. Very.little available,if at all. And often much later at night if at all