Tip to save $$ (big bucks) on rising grocery costs

Hi, I’m Jackson, an intern at WCCB! We all know Charlotte is EXPENSIVE 💸! Most of us are already living on a budget and now we have to deal with rising food costs.

That’s why I quickly started looking for ways to fill my fridge and my belly on a budget! I’ll start with a little background of what led me to discovering a new app and how it’s helped with high grocery costs while living the dorm-room lifestyle.

A new summer experience:

The summer of 2024 marked an important benchmark in my life: living alone. For the first time, I was paying all my own bills and expenses. Though exciting, this came with some unexpected challenges. I quickly discovered that being a college student in a big city doesn’t allow for lavish living. With most of my money going towards rent, I knew I had to buckle down. After accessing my spending habits, my food budget quickly came under scrutiny.

I had to set a hard limit of $50 per week on groceries. To make that budget work, I spent hours searching for affordable recipes to meal prep. While somewhat fun at first, eating the same meals EVERY DAY took a toll on my taste buds and mental well-being. I needed to shake things up. I had to find a cheap way to try different foods.

Then, I remembered Too Good To Go, an app where food retailers can sell “surprise bags” at discounted prices. I was willing to try anything to make my food budget stretch, so I ordered a large surprise bag at Yard Cooked Dishes. When I opened the bag, I was shocked to see the items inside.

For the next two days, I ate like a king 👑. I received a large container of chicken gumbo with enough food to feed a family of four. The entire mystery bag cost me $5.99, a total steal 👮‍♂️.

I continued ordering from the cost savings app throughout the summer but was shocked at the small selection of restaurants offering surprise bag deals.

I questioned why only a limited number of businesses appeared on the app? There were also the questions about why the app was created and how it benefits more than just people on a strict food budget floating in my mind.

Fortunately, my current internship at WCCB Charlotte provided the resources and time to answer those questions. While writing this article serves to satisfy my curiosity, I hope it introduces you to a new way of saving money on food.

What is Too Good To Go?:

To answer this question, I interviewed Sarah Soteroff, a Sr. PR Manager at Too Good To Go. She described that Too Good To Go is a European-based app founded in 2016 that connects food retailers to consumers by providing discounted surprise bags filled with their unsold food. The company describes itself as a ‘win-win-win’ for businesses, consumers, and the environment, helping to sell potential food waste.

I first discovered the app through an international friend while studying abroad in Paris, France 🇫🇷, in the Fall of 2023. In Paris, it felt like every food realtor was on the app. Bakeries and restaurants offered surprise bags of the tastiest croissants, sandwiches, and pastries on every street corner. Needless to say, I was fulfilling my fantasy of eating all the delicious French cuisine I could get my mitts on. What’s impressive is that all this food would’ve gone to waste, and what’s even better is that I was receiving discounts in excess of 50%.

Too Good To Go launched in Charlotte in June 2024. The company builds unique apps for every city so it can specifically target local businesses and consumers.

With less than a year since launch, the app is still gaining traction. However, the Charlotte version of the app already includes 165 supplying stores and 11,000 active app users (people who actively use the app to purchase discounted food). It has also saved more than 7,500 meals that would have otherwise gone to waste.

What are the benefits of Too Good To Go? – Consumers and Food Retailers:

Consumers:

Soteroff describes the biggest draw for customers is receiving “great food at a lower cost.” Additionally, surprise bags add an element of excitement and security to any purchase. To illustrate this, Soteroff described a surprise bag from a bagel 🥯 store.

“If you get a bagel bag,” Soteroff began, “maybe you get a blueberry bagel, and you don’t like blueberry, and that’s fine; you got 12 other great ones.”

Personally, I experienced something very similar this past summer. I bought a cookie surprise bag from Tiff’s Treats – Uptown for $7.50. Even though the bag included an oatmeal raisin cookie (I’m not a fan), I devoured the rest of the delicious cookies 🍪 (no shame here).

Those cookies and various other surprise bags had me eating like royalty for cheap without spending hours daily preparing food.

Food Retailers:

My initial summer goal was to never eat out. Who could blame me? When one take-out meal costs about 1/4 of my weekly food budget, you’re motivated to stay home. However, with their surprise bags and low prices, Too Good To Go encouraged me to order food. Not only did I benefit from the low costs, but the businesses turned leftover food into extra revenue 🤑.

“This is an opportunity for you to get new customers in the store, get some free marketing on the app, and try out some new products because there is no risk that you will need to throw them out if they don’t get sold.”

Additionally, Soteroff highlighted that businesses don’t need extra staff to operate the app. It’s easy to manage:

“You don’t have to itemize things, you don’t have to take new photos, and you don’t need to write new descriptions if you don’t want to.”

Final thoughts:

I’m a big supporter of family-owned restaurants. These hidden gems are the city’s heartbeat, but sadly, they are also most impacted by economic changes.

For example, I recently had lunch at Lang Van in east Charlotte. While there, I was informed that they nearly went out of business during the pandemic. Luckily, the community helped keep this beloved Vietnamese restaurant open by flooding the family-run eatery with donations and to-go orders.

Too Good To Go provides a third way to help in the future: purchasing leftover food. With the potential of turbulent times ahead, both the restaurants I buy from and myself need all the money we can save. For me, it’s a win, win, win, as I am helping keep beloved restaurants open, devouring delicious dishes for cheap, and helping cut back on food waste in Charlotte.

Ultimately, I want to help people who are struggling to bring food to the table every day. I would still be cooking microwavable noodles in my dorm room had I not downloaded Too Good To Go. It not only allowed this college student to eat on a tight budget but also made my clothes a bit tighter and my wallet fatter!

How can I learn more?:

To download the app, click HERE.

To learn more about signing up a business to the app, click HERE.

About the Author:

Jackson Morrice is a senior at Davidson College. Graduating in May, he will be receiving his diploma with a major in political science, philosophy and economics and a minor in communications. He hopes to work in digital communications or marketing in the future.