The world’s largest anti-food waste app, Too Good To Go, has officially launched in Galway this week. The app enables consumers to buy surplus food from local businesses to fight food waste and tackle the climate crisis.
Galwegians can simply download the free Too Good To Go app and search for nearby restaurants, grocery stores, pubs, cafes and producers with unsold food. They then purchase a ‘surprise bag’ at a fraction of the original retail price, collect it at an allotted time, and enjoy it.
A surprise bag can contain any surplus produce that would otherwise be disposed of at the end of the day, from baked goods to deli produce to leftover vegetables and other ingredients that can be used to create a home cooked meal.
There are already 17 Galway businesses signed up to fight food waste with Too Good To Go, including Temple Cafe, Marmalade Bakery, Mountain Road Kitchen, Mocha Beans, Ember Firehouse, and Rouge.
Having first launched in Dublin in October, Too Good To Go has already amassed a community of more than 50,000 app users and more than 330 food businesses, which together have saved some 35,000 bags of food from going to waste. That means, to date, Dubliners have saved 62,500kg of CO2, the equivalent of that emitted from 581 flights from Dublin to London.
With this week's launch in Galway, there is a huge potential for the city's residents to join the food waste fighting movement. In fact a recent survey commissioned by Too Good To Go found that almost half of Galwegians (47 per cent ) have included sustainable habits in their 2022 resolutions.
“I’m thrilled to be launching Too Good To Go in Galway," said Jamie Crummie, co-founder of Too Good To Go. "We’ve already seen a huge appetite for fighting food waste since we arrived in Ireland in October last year, and I’m excited to see how much of an impact Galwegians can have in the coming months and years. By doing something as simple as saving a surprise bag on their way home from work or on their way to meet friends, they are doing their part in tackling climate change while getting some delicious food in the process - it’s a win-win.”
Cafe Temple, one of the first local businesses to join the app, said in a statement: “As a social business we wanted to join Too Good To Go as the ethos just sits perfectly with our goals of sustainability and waste reduction. Every year tonnes of food that is perfectly edible is thrown away and anything we can do to counter this and reduce our impact on the planet must be done. Too Good To Go is a great platform as it allows you to connect with your customers and provide them with yummy food that's still perfect to eat, that would otherwise be wasted, while still recovering costs.”
Find out more about the app at www.toogoodtogo.ie and follow @toogoodtogo.ie on social media to stay updated.
