I Lived Off Of The Too Good To Go App For A Whole Day
- Veronica Piurek
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
One weekend, while in the midst of an intense study session turned “Pitch Perfect” watch party, a friend casually complained that they were starving. They hadn’t eaten all day, saying, “But all the dining halls are closed, and NYC food is so expensive!” My response: “Have you tried Too Good To Go?”
Full disclosure—at the time, I had not tried Too Good To Go, but I’d always wanted to. Released in 2015, the app is a social impact company looking to reduce food waste by allowing consumers to purchase “surprise bags” at a reduced price from local restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores. While their mission resonated strongly with me, growing up in Indiana meant the only places participating were chains like Kroger and Dunkin’ Donuts, which didn’t leave me with many options.
Despite this, the idea fascinated me. If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know just how often excess food or ingredients are discarded, with nearly 60 million tons of waste generated annually in the United States alone.
While we might be the most egregious example of food waste, the Too Good To Go app was actually created in Copenhagen, Denmark, by co-founders Jamie Crummie and Lucie Basch. Their goal was to help businesses by allowing them to recover uneaten food costs and help the environment by reducing landfill needs and methane emissions. Sounds like a win-win for everyone, right? But as a cheap college student looking for quality, I can’t help but be skeptical. So I decided to see if I could live off surprise bags for a whole day on October 2nd, which, ironically, was when I should have been fasting for Yom Kippur. Oh well, G’mar chatima tovah.
Over a 24-hour period I bought four bags, which I will be reviewing and ranking based on the following factors: price, variety, and taste.
9:00 a.m. - Breakfast at Irving Farm Coffee
When I told a classmate what I was doing, they offered to participate by grabbing breakfast with me, the logic being that we could check out the distribution between bags. Here’s our final haul:
Bag #1 Contents: The ‘Tunisian’ sandwich, a croissant, one egg and cheese English muffin, and one peanut butter ball.
Bag #2 Contents: A cranberry muffin, a bacon, egg and cheese English muffin, one breakfast burrito, and one peanut butter ball.
Price: $10.86 total, $5.43 for each bag (tax included).
Final Review: 6.5/10
Honestly, this bag was worth it just for the croissant. The croissant was marvellous, buttery and flaky. My classmate who actually likes tuna and olives said that the Tunisian wasn’t bad; everything else was pretty decent if not notable. To me, the muffin tasted like chemical-induced depression. The peanut butter balls were tasty, but stale, as is to be expected from day-old food. I took a few bites of the English muffins and breakfast burrito and found them relatively indistinguishable from one another, so I pawned them off on other people to save stomach space.
Overall, I’d say this was great value for a place that charges six dollars for a latte. The croissant alone should have cost six dollars, instead I spent five, and got a whole bag of extra snacks for my troubles. Plus, tipping isn’t necessary. You say, “Hey, Too Good To Go?” and the employees hand you food, and you leave. For those dealing with anxiety around ordering, it’s amazingly impersonal.
3:00 p.m. - Lunch at Ray’s Pizza & Bagel Cafe
For lunch, I took a little walk down to East Village for a bag full of what I assumed would be pizza and bagels, but ended up being something else entirely.
Contents: Penne pasta, three sumptuous, delicious giant meatballs, and rice.
Price: $5.43
Final Review: 8/10
This plate was such a delight. I was greeted by a man with an exquisite accent who told me I could pick out one pasta, one protein, and one miscellaneous item; I chose the rice. I also got a fountain drink, hence the root beer.
Honestly, the meal would have been average if it weren’t for those meatballs. They were warm, juicy, and fragrant with Italian herbs.
When I told the man I was writing an article, he told me to let my readers know that if you use this app after 11 p.m., you can come and pick out three slices of pizza for $5.43. Plus, the pizza looked really good, so if you ever have a midnight craving for a sweet deal, drop by to get that sweet meal.
7:00 p.m. - Dessert at Let’s Bounce
Don’t worry, I didn’t forget dinner, but with the time slots listed in the app, I had to get a little creative scheduling-wise. So… early dessert! We took the subway to Chinatown for this, and factoring in the cost of travel, what should have been a $7.61 order ended up costing $13.41.
Contents: One Cheesecake
Price: $7.61
Final Review: 7.5/10
Was this cheesecake frozen? Yes. Did we heat it using a readily available microwave? No.
Me and three other people ate this Japanese-inspired dessert on a dorm floor with plastic forks and it was delicious, creamy, tangy, and fluffy, though I missed the classic graham cracker crust. The texture got a bit repetitive over time, since we didn’t microwave it, so it wasn’t as bouncy as you would expect given the name of the restaurant. All this being said, I’d like to go back there and try a different (non-frozen) flavor sometime.
10:00 p.m. - Dinner at Madam Ji
Okay, this one requires a disclaimer. The pick-up time slot was between 9-10 p.m., and I showed up at 9:50, at which point their kitchen was closed. The staff were extremely kind to me, and I was honestly glad they managed to scrape together anything at all.
Contents: Rice and what I think was paneer makhani, I couldn’t tell by looking at it.
Price: $5.43
Final Review: 2/10
I did not like this. The rice was decent, but the tofu cubes were cold on the inside and reminded me of cafeteria food. To make matters worse, I washed it down with a sugar-free Vitaminwater from a vending machine.
Here’s the thing about Too Good To Go: you have to accept the possibility of lackluster meals or meals that you just might not like. I tried to branch out and cover a variety of different places, but the truth is that while obscure pizza and dessert places can be fun, bakeries and pastry shops are probably your safest bet in terms of quality and availability.
One thing you’ll quickly learn when scrolling through surprise bags is that the pick-up time slots are odd to say the least. On a given day you could buy a bag of frozen meat between 10-10:30 a.m., a bag of tea from 9:30-9:50 p.m., and a variety pack of Kathi rolls from 11:10-11:20p.m. If I showed up at 11:21, would I still get a roll? I don’t know, but maybe that’s part of the fun. It’s low-risk and high-reward!
According to my stats on the app, I’ve saved 23 grams of kWh through just one day of shopping, which is the environmental equivalent to 30 cups of coffee or 20 minutes in the shower. Imagine what a whole week could do! While the idea of blind bags might seem scary, it’s for a good cause; not to mention they’re more affordable than almost everything else in the city. What is there to lose by giving it a shot? Five dollars?
If you ask me, a bargain like that is too good to waste.
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