Too good to go – Magic Bags? or too good to be true?

While I’m no full time eco warrior I do try to make small changes to help with what I can! And seeing Too good to go advertised this looked like a great way to help local restaurants and businesses with surplus food create less waste.

Did you know?

• More than one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted — approximately 2.5 billion tons of food (WWF Report, 2021)
• That means within a year, we waste around 51 tons every second (BCG, 2018)
• Food waste will rise by a third by 2030, when 2.1bn tons will either be lost or thrown away, equivalent to 66 tons per second (BCG, 2018)

You may have also seen Olio is another food redistribution app for households to also offer out unwanted food to save it from being thrown out.

The app is free to download and available on Apple App Store and Google Play store, I have a Samsung so all the screen shots are from the Google play store version.

So how does it work?

“Reducing food waste is one of the most important things we can do to reverse global warming.” Chad Frischmann, Climate Change Expert Source: TooGoodToGo

Founded in 2015 by Lucie Basch, Too Good To Go saved its first meal in Copenhagen in March 2016. The initial idea of the founders was to focus on food that became waste at the end of buffets. It became available in the United States in 2020, starting in New York City. You can now use it across 13 European countries, including the United Kingdom Source: ZeroWasteEurope

Once you have downloaded the mobile app you’ll need to set your location. You can then set your distance you are willing to travel to get your surprise bag with options for 3km, 5km, 10km, 15km and 30km. This will generate a list of all your local stores / local businesses that are part of Too Good To Go.

You can change your location if like us you are happy to collect bags from different locations (If you happen to travel to Disneyland Paris the cafe in the Cheyenne Hotel do Magic Bags!)

You can also choose some preferences such as if you only want meals, breads & pastries, groceries or ‘others’. There is a dietary option also for Vegetarian or Vegan bags only. Although the fresh food products are close to their expiration date they are often perfectly fine to eat within a few days of this.

Unfortunately they can’t cater for those with food allergies as the food items are just excess food left over at end of the day.

You can even narrow it down to the pickup times you prefer although generally places will be advertising for collections the next day towards the end of the day with a time window.

Obviously the more restrictive your preferences the less options you’ll have for bags that are available.

We found the best way to remember is to set an alarm on our phones for a couple of minutes before your preferred bags go live as some sell out super quick!

Our Magic Bags

Greggs

Updated 8/4/2023

We managed to get a Greggs bag which cost us £2.59 with an RRP Value of over £8. These sell out within a minute of going live so you’ll need to be quick if you want to grab one!

In our bag we got

4 x Caramel Custard Doughnuts £4.40
4 x Jam Doughnuts £2.25
2 x Belgium Buns (Chloes Favourite!) £2.20
Tuna Cruch Pasta Box £2.95
Roast Chicken Salad Roll £2.85

Total RRP £14.65 Saving over 80%

We thought this was an absolute bargain we got extra food over and above the estimated value and we were really pleased with that. Almost £15 worth of food for £2.59! Everything was fine for a day or so too although I have seen people freeze alot of what they get there’s no time for that with our kids. If you love sweet treats this is the one for you.

Gaz collected it and said the staff were lovely too and knew what they were doing which was great.

Morrisons Daily

Updated 8/4/2023

The only other bags available near us are from the Morrisons Daily which is located within one of the local petrol stations. This bag was a bit more costing us £3.29 with an RRP Value of over £10.

These don’t seem to sell out quite so quickly and only had a 3.8* rating on the too good to go app so we weren’t sure what to expect.

In our bag we got

Chicken Tikka Sandwich Filler £2
Tuna & Sweetcorn Sanwich Filler £2
Spaghetti Bolognese Ready Meal £3
Punnet of Raspberries £2.25
Celery £1.15

Total RRP £10.40 Saving of around 70%

While this wasn’t quite as much as was in the Greggs bag it was still around a 70% saving on the RRP. Oscar loves raspberries so he was really happy to tuck into those. The rabbits will make the most of the celery and Gaz will use everything else.

The only negative for this one is Gaz said the staff were quite rude to him and didn’t really know what they were doing. As we are new customers and these were our first collections, we also didn’t know what we were doing which didn’t help!

Now we know the process this will make it a bit easier to help the shop staff if they aren’t sure what to do.

Starbucks

Updated : 6/6/2022

I managed to grab a Starbucks back from the store near our home! This is the most exensive bag I have purchased so I expected it to be one of the best. With a minimum £13.50 value this bag costs £4.50

The bag was already made up when I got there which made it a super quick pick up and the staff were lovely.

In our bag we got

No-Meatball Marinara Wrap £4.50
Butter Croissant £2.05
Smoked Bacon Roll £3.70
Chocolate Chunk Cookie £2.09
Cheese & Marmite Mini Ciabatta £3.40

Total RRP £15.74 Saving of around 70%

And even more exciting for me, there are actually thing I will eat so I did keep some of these for myself before the kids claimed it all!

As some of it needed reheating Starbucks also include instructions on how to reheat it which is really useful.

Costa Coffee

So was it too good to be true?

For me personally there wasn’t a single thing in either bag I would eat, however I didn’t get the bags for me. I know I am fussy and these bags are not my thing at all, but for Gaz and all the kids they were perfect and we got a good amount of food.

Everything in the bags will be eaten by them (or the rabbits!) so none of it will be going to waste which is the whole point of them. It was good to know we stopped perfectly good food going to waste!

Update 6/6/2022 – I did enjoy the Starbucks bag though
Updated 8/4/2023 – The Greggs bags were great!

If you join the Facebook groups you’ll see lots of people actually get some magic bags way over the values given but I do think it is a bit of pot luck to get one of those! Grocery stores / Supermarkets and Coffee Shops seem to have the best mix of leftover food

We would definitely have more Greggs bags, we probably wouldn’t bother so much with the Morrisons Daily ones though.

We will be trying some more when we get back to Worcester as we have a much wider choice of places to collect bags from.

I’d love to know if you have tried too good to go and what you got in your bags so feel free to comment on social or down below 🙂

ChrissyJ xxx