The Lansdowne location of Whole Foods is participating in a new partnership with the popular service Too Good to Go, which aims to reduce food waste.
Founded in Copenhagen in 2015, Too Good To Go is a registered B Corp business that connects businesses worldwide with consumers to sell surplus food at a discounted price.
Starting Jan. 9, all of Whole Foods Canadian locations, including the Ottawa store in the Glebe, will offer two types of bags through Too Good To Go’s app – a bakery bag including items such as breads, muffins and cookies for $6.99 with a value of $21, and a prepared foods bag including items like soups and ready-to-eat meals for $9.99 with a value of $30.
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Customers use the app to reserve a bag of goods at a reduced price. Customers know generally what they are getting, like bakery items or prepared meals, but not specifically what will be included. All transactions are handled within the app, so customers then go to pick their bag up at the allotted time.
Sarah Soteroff, senior PR manager at Too Good To Go, said the partnership is two years in the making.
“We’ve been working with (Whole Foods’) sustainability team directly for about two years. Whole Foods is massively famous for high quality, highest standard of food, so they’ve been on our list since we entered the North American market,” Soteroff said.
She said Whole Foods was looking for ways to improve sustainability.
“For smaller businesses, if (they) can recoup some revenue off food, that’s great for (them) because it helps (their) bottom line. At the volume of food Whole Foods is doing, what’s really important to them is reducing food waste,” she said.
Soteroff said Too Good To Go is calling 2025 “the year of grocery,” as it hopes to partner with more grocery retailers to expand its offerings to customers.
For example, in addition to bakery items and prepared meals, grocery stores could offer fruits and vegetables.
“People are looking to reduce their grocery budget so any grocery partner is the greatest version of helping to reduce food waste because they have so much volume so the potential is exponential,” she said.
While Soteroff said food waste generally is down, she said there is still a large amount of waste at the retail level.
“We are a wealthy society. We like to have abundance. We like to have choice on hand. We’ve become a little bit spoiled as consumers by thinking we can have any kind of food at any time of year regardless of the climate. While we don’t want people to limit themselves, there is an empowerment factor if you can be a part of the solution by reducing food waste by purchasing it and consuming it at home,” she said.
Soteroff estimates that each bag sold translates to about 2.7 kilos of CO2 removed from the environment. Consumers are able to track their individual impact on the environment through the app.
“We don’t have to wait for large-scale government intervention or huge systemic change, you can make small changes multiple times a day and still eat really tasty food,” she said.
Too Good to Go has grown its presence in Ottawa-Gatineau from 40 food business partners when it launched in 2022 to 470 food business partners today. Its larger Canadian partners include Tim Hortons, Bento Sushi and Metro.
The Piggy Market in Westboro started as a local food store 16 years ago, selling cheeses and deli meats as well as prepared meals. Over the years, it expanded to include a butcher shop and a bakery.
All that food production means there’s bound to be food waste.
Dave Neil, owner of The Piggy Market, said he tries to reuse items as much as possible.
“We’ll still have bread after two days but you can only make so many bread crumbs and croutons before it becomes an overabundance,” he said.
To combat the problem, Neil and his team partnered with Too Good To Go to recoup lost profit and minimize the amount of food being thrown away at the end of the day.
“We’re really trying to get some of those things that we can’t turn into other products and give them a space where they can thrive and make sure people get what they want at the price they want,” Neil said.
Neil said Too Good To Go allows him to feel that he isn’t “throwing money in the garbage.”
