Paolo Zegarelli, owner of Paolo’s of Boca, was looking at a typical end-of-day surplus — assorted slices of pizza left unsold, which under normal circumstances would be tossed in the bin or taken home by servers.
Then he received an online order through an app called Too Good to Go, and those leftovers turned into dinner — and a bargain — for Boca Raton resident Rachel Rifat and her husband. Three pieces of white, plain and pepperoni plus a bonus meat calzone. Total: $5.34 after tax. Win-win.
In recent weeks, customers like Rifat have buzzed on social media (including in the Sun Sentinel-run “Let’s Eat, South Florida” Facebook group) about Too Good to Go, which has exploded in Los Angeles, Boston and New York City. A Denmark startup that expanded to South Florida in 2023, the app is designed to fight food waste by matching diners with restaurant leftovers. Most meals on the app are sold as “surprise bags,” often at the close of business for one-third the price.
Some like it for the bargain, some for the sustainability — and others for the surprise.
“It’s very generous what he gives you,” said Rifat, about Zegarelli’s surprise bag at Paolo’s. “And it was so cheap.”
A typical surprise-bag encounter sounds like adult trick-or-treating, an odd grab-bag experience not unlike gambling.
Melissa Keller recently used the app to buy treats at Eclair Affaire in Davie. “There were four items in the box,” Keller posted on Facebook. “Two éclairs — tres leches and chocolate, one big croissant thing, and the little chocolate cup was some kind of passion fruit with custard in a chocolate shell. It’s like $20 worth of items.” She paid $6.67.
“I love this,” agreed Renata Wagner, showing off her round of gleaming éclairs in the “Let’s Eat, South Florida” comments. “The scale might not … but dang this is great!”
Too Good to Go stands among a small handful of app marketplaces — Flashfood is another, though it’s based in the northeastern United States, with no local presence yet — that tout a simple idea: All restaurants have food destined for garbage landfills. By providing a way to sell leftovers for a bargain, they say they cut greenhouse gas emissions while helping restaurants recoup food costs.
U.S. food waste accounts for 30% to 40% of the food supply, according to the Food and Drug Administration. On a global scale, a United Nations Environment Programme report said it’s estimated that 8% to 10% “of greenhouse emissions are associated with food that is not consumed.” That’s because once discarded food reaches landfills, it starts rotting, releasing methane, carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases, said Peter Ricci, head of Florida Atlantic University’s hospitality management program.
“The biggest food wasters are restaurants because of their volume,” Ricci said. “Some have poor forecasting. The smaller mom-and-pops go by gut instinct about how food sells, and sometimes don’t keep track. Larger companies are better about it because they use macro-level software that tracks per-check averages week to week, so they know how much food to order.”
Of course, some restaurants conjured creative ways to cut waste long before the advent of food waste apps. Panera Bread’s Day-End Dough-Nation program donates unsold baked goods to local nonprofit groups at the end of each night. Meanwhile, Miami-based Vicky Bakery slashes prices on pastries in the afternoons to avoid trashing unsold food.
Too Good to Go is an easy option, said Chris MacAulay, the app’s U.S. country manager. On the app, customers first browse a menu of participating eateries, then reserve strict, one-hour pickup windows for bags priced between $4 and $6 — containing food that retails for triple that cost. In exchange, Too Good to Go takes $1.79 per bag and charges restaurants a $79 annual fee.
Roughly 1,000 independent and chain restaurants use the app in Florida, he said, and have sold 230,000 bags of leftovers in 17 months.
The app isn’t built to make restaurants a profit, MacAulay said.
“We’re working with the sunk cost portion of their business,” he explained. “They made an investment in cooking a baguette and, instead of it being wasted, we’re facilitating it going to someone who’s hungry.”
Sabrina Courtemanche, a pastry chef who owns New River Cafe & Bakery on Fort Lauderdale’s riverfront, said her bakeshop limits sales to five $5.99 surprise bags daily, scheduling pickups an hour before closing. About 75% are from new customers, mostly college-aged and discount-savvy, who show up, flash orders on their phones by way of identification, peruse the pastry finds and leave.
Selling pastries at rock-bottom prices has fringe benefits, she said. “We’re literally just covering food costs, so I use (the app) as a marketing tool,” said Courtemanche, who has sold almost 1,300 bags so far. “People are like, ‘Oh, I never knew you existed before!’ So I throw a menu in the bags and a 10%-off coupon so they come in next time.”
Usual surprise-bag pastries include quiches and breakfast buns (crunchy bread pockets packed with eggs, smoked bacon and aged cheddar). Before joining the app, baked goods like these went into the trash, she said.
“I did have to throw some things out in the beginning,” Courtemanche said. “This is better. Breaking even is better than zero.”
For Karen Newhart, a marketing specialist who heard about the app on “Let’s Eat, South Florida” in May, the surprise is part of the pull.
“It’s like a sweepstakes,” said Newhart, of Pembroke Pines, who scooped up a half-dozen bagels from Bagels & Co. in Fort Lauderdale for $3.99. “If there are five bags, the urgency is there, and it’s fun to get there fast. Because it’s cheap, you’ll always be happy with the one you got.”
Danielle Cain, who owns Zinger’s Deli in Boca Raton with husband Nicholas, joined the platform in May and used the app as a clearance rack for leftovers including mushroom barley soup, mandel bread and knishes, which “sold well.”
For Cain, Too Good to Go was too good to be true, she said, after noticing customers creating multiple accounts to pick up several surprise bags at the same time, preventing her from gaining new customers. She also has had customers request refunds through the app after picking up their food.
Feeling frustrated, Cain said she deleted her account last week. “If you place an order, you should only be able to place one, not exploit us,” she said. “It was becoming a loss for me. You don’t get much out of the app. They say they’re doing good for waste, but for them it’s just profit.”
The app does encourage multiple bags from the same customers, spokesperson Sarah Soteroff said. “The primary goal is reducing food waste,” she said, adding that refund requests represent an “incredibly low percentage of incidents.”
For MacAulay, a bigger problem is when customers miss their pickup windows altogether.
“Say you get caught in traffic, if you don’t have someone making the pickup for you, you might have to sacrifice the transaction you made,” he said. “We’re trying to work on solutions to that.”
Zegarelli, of Paolo’s of Boca, said he doesn’t mind waiting on customers who are late for pickups. He thinks he’s figured out a work-around: Why not avoid leftovers by making the bags part of his business model?
“I make extra pies around 7:30 p.m., sell to people who come in, and whatever’s left I put in surprise boxes. That way, the food’s still hot and fresh,” he said. “I already sell a lot. The rest is advertising.”
Staff writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @p.v.guide and X/Twitter @PhilValys.
