After Success in Texas, Whole Foods and Too Good To Go Expand Partnership Nationwide

Austin-based Whole Foods and Too Good To Go are partnering to reduce food waste nationwide after a successful pilot in the Texas capital.

If you’re not familiar with Too Good To Go, here’s a quick primer. It’s a phone app that lets users purchase a surprise bag of unsold food that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day from local businesses. The app tells users how many surprise bags a location has left, how much they cost, and sometimes gives hints as to what kind of food is in the bag.

The partnership with Whole Foods includes two surprise bags: a bag of bread and a bag of prepared food. The bag of prepared food costs $9.99 and promises food that would normally cost $30. The bag of bread costs $6.99 for a $21 deal.

Too Good To Go launched its app in 2015 in Denmark and in 2021 brought its services to Austin and in 2023 expanded to other Texas cities, including San Antonio, Houston and Dallas.

Sarah Soteroff, head of public relations for Too Good To Go, said Austin is one of their strongest markets.

“We’ve already saved 463,000 meals across Austin from nearly a thousand partners,” Soteroff said.

It’s been a year since Whole Foods and Too Good To Go partnered in Austin. Since then, they’ve avoided thousands of pounds of emissions.

“Based on the success of that pilot, we were able to launch the first 150 stores earlier in June. And then the last 200 stores came in last week, and that was a huge success,” Soteroff said.

Briana Ellsworth, a Too Good To Go customer in Austin, has received surprise packages from Whole Foods several times.

“If I’m lucky, there’ll be one with prepared food. The pick-up time is usually in the evening, so you have to plan your day a little bit,” Ellsworth said.

Whenever she can, Ellsworth puts aside pre-prepared food supplies and prepares salads, sandwiches and hot meals for the next few days.

Too Good To Go is looking at other Texas grocery stores to partner with. Among them is one with a loyal following. (You guessed it, HEB.)

“It would be great to work with H-E-B at the state level… because, as you’ve pointed out, there’s so much excess food that’s wasted at the grocery level. So that’s a huge, huge goal for us. The grocery sector is incredibly important,” Soteroff said.

Wondering how big the impact of food waste is? The Environmental Protection Agency says food waste causes more than half of methane emissions from landfills, according to a 2023 report.

“Because of its rapid rate of decomposition, food waste disposed in landfills contributes more methane emissions than any other material disposed in landfills,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in its report.

Whole Foods has committed to cutting food waste in half by 2030 as part of the US Food Lost and Waste 2030 Champions program. Since launching the pilot program with Too Good To Go, Whole Foods has avoided more than 276,000 pounds of CO2 emissions by diverting food waste from landfills, according to an impact report published by Whole Foods.

“We are excited to expand the reach of our program and have an even greater impact as we expect Too Good To Go to be in more than 450 stores by the end of July 2024,” Whole Foods said in its report.