Too Good To Go Alternatives

Too Good To Go (TGTG) is a well known surplus food platform brand in many parts of the world.They have large teams on many continents and those employees cover tech, marketing and sales. They have a presence in large cities and regional areas and now have significant influence due to partnerships with large food retailers across the globe.With large teams however, comes the necessity to charge substantially larger commissions to retailers.So we've put a list together of the top 6 alternatives across the globe and this is how we placed them from first to sixth.First place: Foody Bag Second place: Olio Third place: Flashfood Fourth place: Karma Fifth place: ResQ Sixth place: FoodHero<h2>🥇 Foody Bag</h2>In first place is Foody Bag, an Australian-born app very much like TGTG except it's very community-focused, tying itself in with local charities and organisations.The basics of the app work the same as TGTG, customers see stores with available bags of food and make a purchase. They go pickup the food at the set time and are either instructed to use the swipe function when at store or use display their QR code.The app allows customers to round-up their purchases with the extra cents (or dollars) going to charity. Some of the recipients are OzHarvest, BCNA and Mens Talk.Foody Bag also has an Ambassador program where it works with community members and it gives a percentage of recurring commission to the ambassador for bringing on the new store.The commission Foody Bag charges is much less than Too Good To Go (15% compared to about 30% that TGTG charges). There's also no annual fee.The platform also allows stores to either sell their bags on the platform or donate them to beneficiaries. They can do a mix of both.Although currently launched in Australia only, the for-purpose operation can be licensed to countries across the globe. Foody Bag is working on an open source piece of software which will allow any food platform (think uberEats or DoorDash) to tap into Foody Bag's bag feed to list and sell surplus food.<h2>🥈Olio</h2>Olio have been well-known in Europe with their platform enabling neighbours to share surplus food from home kitchens.They have recently started selling surplus food on their platform and are competing with TGTG in the UK.We'll update this when we hear what their first year successes have been but it's looking promising for this platform.<h2>🥉Flashfood</h2>Flashfood is a, free, sustainability-focused app that connects consumers with grocery retailers to purchase surplus food nearing its best-before date at discounts of up to 50% or more. Users browse deals on produce, meat, and dairy, pay in the app, and pick up items from a designated fridge in-store. <h2>Karma</h2>Karma is a Swedish-founded food rescue app (launched in 2016) that reduces food waste by connecting restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores with consumers to sell surplus food at a discount. It allows users to purchase quality food for half price or less, providing businesses with an extra revenue stream while lessening environmental impact. <h2>ResQ</h2>Unsold food items from restaurants, cafés, and grocery stores that are offered at discounted prices (often 50% or more) through the ResQ Club app to prevent waste. These items are safe to eat but are often leftovers from lunch, near their best-before date, or overproduced, allowing users to buy affordable meals while helping the environment. <h2>Foodhero</h2>Closing our list is sixth-placed, FoodHero, an app-based marketplace that connects consumers with grocery stores and restaurants to sell surplus food items nearing their expiry date, overstock, or "ugly" produce, at significant discounts (25% to 60% off). It aims to reduce food waste, allowing users to buy discounted food and pick it up in-store, while tracking their environmental impact.

Other platforms to sell surplus food

Alternatives to Too Good To Go (TGTG)

Small change, big impact

When someone buys a Foody Bag, they can round their purchase up to the nearest dollar. The extra cents go to a good cause. That is the whole mechanic, and it is deliberately small.Nobody is asked to make a decision about how much to give, or to fill in a form, or to remember to do something later. The choice is a single tap at checkout, and the amount is whatever it takes to reach the next whole dollar. Some people round up by more.On its own that is a few cents. The point is that it happens thousands of times.

Rounding up, one bag at a time

This is the part that makes the feature different from most round-up schemes, where a company nominates one national charity and every customer contributes to the same pot.On Foody Bag the cause is chosen by the store. The bakery, cafe or grocer decides who their customers' cents go to, which usually means a cause with some connection to where the shop actually is or what the people running it care about.So the money stays close to the counter it came from, and a customer rounding up at one shop may be supporting something quite different from a customer rounding up down the road.

The store partner picks the cause

Two causes have now each passed $1,000, raised entirely in rounded-up cents across many partner stores.The first was <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mtalk.com.au/">Mens Talk AU</a>, a Perth not-for-profit working on men's mental health, including suicide prevention. The cheque was presented in person at Scarborough Beach.The second was <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.ozharvest.org/">OzHarvest</a>, one of Australia's leading food rescue organisations, whose vans collect surplus food from businesses and deliver it free to charities that feed people. Food rescuers supporting food rescuers, which is a pleasing way for the money to travel.A third cause is close to the same milestone.

What it has added up to so far

Giving usually fails at the point of friction. A donation that requires a separate decision, a separate payment and a separate moment of remembering is a donation that mostly does not happen, however willing the person is.A round-up removes all three. The decision is already in front of you, the payment is already happening, and the moment is now. What it gives up is size: nobody is donating meaningfully in a single tap.That trade only works at volume, which is why a digital donation tin takes a while to fill and then arrives as a real cheque. A thousand dollars in loose cents is thousands of separate small acts, none of which felt like much at the time.

Why small and automatic beats big and occasional

Small Change, Big Impact moves money. There is a second programme that moves food instead.Community Share lets a store give surplus food directly to a local cause at no charge, with the cause collecting at a time the retailer sets. No bag is sold and no money changes hands. It suits the food that is better going straight to a group who can use it that evening.Between them the two cover the two things a food business actually has to give: what it did not sell, and the goodwill of the people buying from it.

The other way stores give: Community Share

Charities, not-for-profits, schools and community groups can<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.foodybag.com.au/beneficiaries"> register to receive either kind of suppor</a>t. The form asks for the organisation's details, an ABN, a contact, and which of the two programmes suits you.Being listed does not by itself bring in money. A store partner still has to choose you, which in practice means the causes that do best are the ones with a real connection to a neighbourhood where Foody Bag stores operate.If this piece has touched on something difficult and you would like to talk to someone, Lifeline is available on 13 11 14, at any hour.

If you run a good cause

Rounded-up cents, a cause chosen by your local shop, and two cheques so far

How Small Change, Big Impact Actually Works

How to be the next TGTG in your region

Over the years there have been many food surplus apps come and go. Either their business model wasn't right, their marketing failed or their software was mediocre. We looked back at all those shuttered apps that didn't quite hit the mark and the common issue among them all was poor software.Too Good To Go (TGTG) has excellent branding and worldwide market presence and it has the bank account to make software to match.Foody Bag is the only food surplus platform that is comparable and its backers have made a business out of software. Foody Bag's CEO, Stuart Kidd is the brains behind the software company, Apps People, a hugely successful mobile app development company in Australia.He has an enviable track record in startups including being the first person to list a mobile app development company (Applabs Ltd) on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).Foody Bag is about to start its next journey - licence its software worldwide to operators outside of Australia (and including operators in Australia outside of where the platform already has a presence).How will this work?Selected operators will work closely with Foody Bag to launch the platform in their area exclusively, this could be a city, region or a country. The operator will run all marketing campaigns with Foody Bag's help. All software will be provided by Foody Bag. Any new features Foody Bag launches will be delivered worldwide. An operator will be like a franchisee and pay an upfront payment followed by a percentage of sales.<h2></h2>

Channel 9 News Interview

Keep Reading