Too Good To Go.
Do you know what the most successful restauranteurs I’ve met have in common?
Flexibility. When they’ve identified an issue, they find a solution. It doesn’t matter if it’s something they’ve done before or not. They’re willing to try something new in order to solve the problem.
Too Good To Go is a tool that some restauranteurs might find as a satisfactory solution to various problems.
What is it?
Too Good To Go is a service, adjacent to 3rd Party Delivery apps. The difference is that Too Good To Go focuses on the food left over at the end of the day in an attempt to reduce food waste.
How does it work?
As you’re winding down for the day, package up food you don’t think you’ll be selling into “Surprise Bags”. Add the number of bags, the price (and normal retail price so people know what value they’re getting), and the pickup time onto the app. And the people will come pick up the food. You can put special notes about your surprise bags, and customers are instructed to bring a bag, even though you should provide your own.
How does it work for customers?
Customers go onto the Too Good To Go app, looking for deals within a particular radius of their location. They pay for the bag and are told when to come get it. They show up, send a notification in the app that they’ve arrived. When you give them the food, they indicate that they’ve gotten the package so that you get paid.
How does the money work?
Restauranteurs are charged $89 per year (after they’ve made their first $89) and $1.79 per surprise bag.
There’s no additional cost, outside of the surprise bag, to customers.
Too Good To Go uses a 3rd party company to collect money and the transactions are tokenized in the app. The restaurants get a payout, but doesn’t have to deal with each transaction individually.
We tested it.
We ordered Too Good To Go from several establishments. We’ll be posting our experiences on our YouTube page. We chose to visit more than just restaurants because we wanted to understand how different food and beverage companies use Too Good To Go. Hopefully, showing the unique uses of the app might spark an idea for someone.
Overall, the experience was pretty cool. Some of the locations were a little difficult to get to. I suspect that’s part of the reason why Too Good To Go would be a great revenue generator for some businesses. One restaurant was in The City on a road with pretty gnarly and extensive construction. One restaurant was inside a gigantic mall, making it a lovely, albeit long, walk.
We paid between $4.99 and $13.30 for surprise bags for values between $15 - 35. Overall we saved close to 69% over retail price which was a huge value.
We’ve created a playlist on YouTube where we’ll be outlining each experience. You can follow along here.
Here’s what we got:
Intown Sushi: 4 packages of sushi. It was yesterday’s sushi, so the rice was a little hard, but it was overall delicious. (Paid $4.99 for a $34.80 value)
TBS Mart International Market: A variety of local and unique vegetables. (paid $4.99 for a posted value of $15. I wasn’t familiar with some of the vegetables, so I couldn’t verify the value. I suspect it was much higher)
MGM Liquor: A bottle of whiskey. (paid $13.30 for a $35 bottle of whiskey)
YoYo Donuts: A half dozen donuts from today. Still fresh. (paid $5.99 for an estimated $15 of donuts)
Bussin’ Birria Tacos: A half gallon of beef consommé (paid $4.99 for $25 value)
Thoughts:
Intown Sushi: It was an amazing value. I wish reheat instructions would’ve been included to soften the rice a little bit. This restaurant is located in Midtown Global Market. If you’ve never been, it’s a really cool place to check out. It was challenging to get to; Lake Street is under major construction. It took almost an hour to get there, even though it’s only 6 miles from our house.
TBS Mart International Market: I brought my own bag and it was filled to the brim with veggies. I’d never seen Malanga before, but was at least a little familiar with the rest - ginger root, okra, sweet potato, zucchini, carrots, and onions. I think it was worth much more than $15.
MGM Liquor: There was a whiskey surprise bag and I didn’t choose that since I don’t drink whiskey. I was a little disappointed it wasn’t something unique to try. My boyfriend said that it was pretty smooth and a great value.
YoYo Donuts: The pickup time is very short - the half hour after they close. It was clear they had someone hang out late to hand out packages. They didn’t seem super thrilled to be there late, but the donuts were great and still fresh. It’s surprising that YoYo even has enough donuts left over to have surprise bags - it’s an incredibly popular donut place.
Bussin’ Birria Tacos: I think this is a wholly underrated option. Consommé is an amazing soup base, for anyone who likes to make their own soup and “layer” flavors. Consommé is essentially an incredibly flavorful broth. You could use this anywhere a recipe calls for broth. This restaurant is located inside of the Mall of America. It’s not near an exit and on the 3rd floor, so it’s a little bit of a walk to get to it.
Leveraging Too Good To Go.
You have a golden opportunity to utilize Too Good To Go as an acquisition tool, not just a food waste reducing engine. Here are some ways I think that restaurants could use Too Good To Go to either increase your initial sales through Too Good To Go or bring people in as a regular customer.
What to sell. Think about your ingredients, as well as your finished product. If you make homemade salsa for your food, but you’ve made too much of it, consider putting it in a surprise bag.
For most restaurants, you have to be careful about holding food hot, but if you know that you won’t be able to sell it in time, consider refrigerating or freezing it so you can sell it on Too Good To Go. We’re not Servsafe certified yet, so we’re not sure what this process looks like. If you’re getting rid of food that’s sat out too long, consider cutting that time and storing that food for Too Good To Go throughout the day, if it’s realistically possible. Food doesn’t need to be ready to consume on Too Good To Go.
Upselling.
I was surprised that there wasn’t a ton of effort given by any of these restaurants to upsell. The app asks you if you purchased anything else from the restaurants, but there were no effort by people in the stores to encourage purchasing more.
Impulse purchases. A lot of restaurants offer to go. Few of them have a place for impulse purchases at their pickup counter. Drinks, desserts, fun international candies (depending on the restaurant concept). As little as a stand of brownies can bring in extra sales. There were three concepts who had impulse items by their register, but none of those transaction actually happened at their register. It didn’t feel “ok” to purchase anything else. If the transactions had moved to the register and I was asked if I wanted anything else, I may have purchased something else.
Look around. For non-restaurants, if the proprietor could’ve said “I’m going to go grab your bag. In the meantime, feel free to look around and see if you want anything else”, I would’ve done just that.
Bounce-backs. Consider including some sort of bounce-back flyer in the bag. Either encourage them to download your app or incentivize them to come back with a coupon or advert. Leverage slow days or times of day if you don’t want to do a general discount. Or include a regular or seasonal menu with neat food or drinks that may draw people back. You have a golden opportunity to bring people back to your restaurant. Find a new and interesting way to get these people back into your restaurant, and maybe new regulars.
Overall.
It was a great experience and a great value. At times I sometimes felt like I was inconveniencing people. I might’ve been, or it’s that engrained Minnesotan urge to not be a bother. I think that most proprietors were using Too Good To Go at face value - an entirely transactional interaction. I think that apps like this should be leveraged as a way to introduce new people to your business. Getting them back in should be your priority.
As a customer, it’s a nice little adventure. I would use it again.