Too Good To Go - here's what we thought

I’ve had the app on my phone for about a year, but honestly, never opened it. But with money tight for pretty much everyone right now amid the cost-of-living crisis, most of us are looking for ways to save cash – so I decided to give it a go and see if it could genuinely help.

Too Good To Go rescues ‘magic’ bags of surplus, unsold food from shops and restaurants that have signed up to be a part of the programme.

It’s horrifying to think how much perfectly good food goes to waste every day, simply because it didn’t get sold in time. It’s even more painful knowing how many hungry and vulnerable people this food could be feeding instead.

There are people living in poverty all over the country, but it’s particularly pertinent in Wycombe. A report from the University of Sheffield last year estimated that around 14 per cent of people in Wycombe are hungry, and around 29 per cent struggle to access food. A shocking statistic for such an affluent county.

So is it really possible to save money using Too Good To Go? This is what we found out.

Ordering

You can download the app for free from Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. I opened the app and started to browse what was on offer that day.

I was surprised how many outlets have signed up in the area. In High Wycombe and surrounding areas (you can set the distance based on how far you’re willing to travel), there was Greggs, Wenzel’s, Auntie Anne’s, Costa and Starbucks, among plenty of others I could have gone for.

While these outlets might be good for a treat or a lunch meal every now and then, it’s not a realistic option for struggling families, so I was more interested in what supermarkets had signed up.

I noticed there were quite a few different Co-Op stores on the list, so I opted for one their magic bags to see if you can actually put together any proper meals from it.

The Co-Op at Park Parade in Hazlemere was offering bags for £3, with items inside worth £10. It had a collection time of between 4.30pm and 8.30pm, which worked perfectly for the end of my working day, so I clicked reserve.

I was promptly reminded that these bags are a surprise – you have no idea what might be in the bag, as it depends on what the store has in surplus that day. It also reminds you that if you’re concerned about ingredients or allergens, to contact the store directly.

There were three magic bags on offer from the Co-Op, so the app prompted me to choose how many I wanted. I chose one, clicked reserve, and was then given a handy countdown to let me know how long until I could pick it up. All in all, this took about five minutes.  

Picking up the bag

I pulled up at Park Parade and walked into the Co-Op. The app told me I needed to go to the kiosk, which was right at the front of the store, and click on the ‘confirm collection’ button once I was in the shop. All pretty simple so far.

After a short time queuing, I told the lady behind the till I was here to pick up a magic bag. She put an announcement over the tannoy and told me someone would be along shortly.

Sure enough, another employee came out from the back of the shop with a carrier bag within a minute or two.

He checked my order number, handed over the bag, and that was it – my first ever magic bag collected.

I got back to the car and pulled out the contents to see what we were dealing with. We had:

• The Gym Kitchen Chicken Tikka microwave meal (400g) – original price £3.75, new price not stated
• 5% fat pork mince (500g) – original price £3.25, new price £1.92
• Egg fried rice with peas and sesame oil microwave side dish (300g) – original price £1.65, new price 99p
• Green vegetable medley with bouillon butter (260g) – original price £2.30, new price £1.10

Thoughts

I picked the bag up at around 5.45pm, and all of these items were on-date, so I spent the car journey home wondering what I could conjure up with them that night.

Once I was back home, I checked each item to see if I could freeze any of it to preserve it. Only the pork mince was suitable, so I popped half of it in the freezer for another day.

With the other half and the egg fried rice, we put together a pork fried rice dish, but this obviously needed more ingredients. Luckily we had some soy sauce, hoisin sauce, onions and some garlic to give it a bit of flavour. We had the green veg on the side.

The chicken tikka was a meal in itself, and a relatively nutritious one at that – it had spiced brown rice, lentils, cauliflower and spring greens, offering two of my ‘five-a-day’.

We didn’t actually eat this on the day, but the next day for lunch. Although it was past its ‘use-by’ date by that point, it was still perfectly fine.

Overall, my first supermarket magic bag was pretty successful. Would I use it again? Definitely. I got a decent amount of food for just £3, although some of it would have made a pretty bland meal if I didn’t have other sauces and spices in the cupboard already to jazz it up.

I don’t think you could really plan your entire week’s meals around these bags, as you never know what you might get and some of the available bags can get snapped up quite quickly (particularly from places like Starbucks).

I definitely saved a bit of money, but you’d probably be able to make better savings at somewhere like Aldi if you’re feeding a family.

However, the whole Too Good To Go process was really simple and it was comforting knowing that the food didn’t go to landfill.

It also encouraged me to think a lot harder about the ingredients I was using and how I could make the most out of them - so I’ll definitely be using the app again in future.