Too Good to Go food app

[Orangesandlemons77]

I have just picked up by first bag from Too Good to Go- from Pret. It's really nice I got 2 Thai veg soups, a falafel wrap and a macaroni cheese...

It's an app to reduce food waste, mine cost £4 but i think it would have come to about £12.

So I just wondered if others use it and what you would recommend?

I've had a few. Toby Carvery was shite. A slither of turkey, a Yorkshire pudding the size of my head, a not huge amount of badly cooked veg and a bucket of terrible gravy, which I suspect was vegetarian.

Greggs quite good and excellent value (2 pasties, 2 sandwiches and 4 donuts) but I don't want to eat that much food from Greggs. Nero, wasabi and Leon dinner quite good, worth the money, makes a treat better value.

Leon breakfast was so poor I complained and currently have a £5 credit on my account. I paid £4 for two egg sandwiches that wouldn't have cost much more at full price and I'd have been able to get a nearly free coffee with it.

The pickup times were too late for me at most of our local ones, except Gregg's - which I always missed out on anyway, I never did figure out how to get one of theirs! They always seemed to have sold out regardless of what time I looked?! I use Olio instead now which is great.

I did. We did a Morrisons TGTG bag for £3 and it was vast. I think they just wanted to get shot of end of date food.

I can't eat pastries or bread but wanted to get it to see the content. I kept some non carb bits.

We photographed it and put it on Facebook within half an hour and a local family had it for free.

I'm rural so not much choice, but have had a Spar one (awful, 6 month past BB date special K cereal and some snack things), a couple of co-op ones (OK but not great) and a budgens one (excellent, had meat and stuff we actually eat). A lot of them the collection times don't fit with my work (I can go after work or on the way home) and others not worth the fuel cost to pick up from home.
If I was out for the day I'd check new ones in the area and grab something on the way home. New places being added all the time.

I have used it for the £3.79 Carvery.

My MIL drones on about this constantly, she gets great stuff from CoOp but we are an allergy household so I can only imagine that most bags will have something that has to go in the bin so not worth it. I would have loved this as a student though!

I use it. Morrisons one was very good and Toby Carvery but my favourite is a local bakery. Get so much for £4 and can feed both kids for 3 days for their packed lunches with it (get premade sandwiches and baguettes).

Well that's basically what it is for

I used it for a while but gave up. We have a big Starbucks drive through near us and the bag I was given was a few pastries (fine) but then 4 vegan toasties. I toasted one and it was awful (coconut cheese?). Then I got a bag from a local independent bakery. I'd never been before and was quite excited to see what I got. I got 4 huge, doorstop, full english breakfast butties - stone cold fried egg, sausage baked beans etc, all congealed into a fatty mess. Went straight in the bin. The final one I tried was a posh delicatessen in town for £8. a bit of a pain to drive into town and had to hang around for them to close. Lovely piece of chicken, but then 5 small wedges of different cheeses, which were ok but I'm not keen on fruit in cheese (cranberry, apricot). One was lovely - it was white truffle.

All in all, a bit of a disappointment. I've deleted the app now.

They have very few shops in our town that do it but on holiday in London last year we got a brilliant roast chicken, rice and a vegetable sauce from a restaurant in Edgware Road. They seemed a bit unsure about what they were supposed to do and asked us what meal we wanted. Not bad for £4!

Yes, tried it once at an independent greengrocer - I've never seen so many rotting grapes. And some very sad tomatoes and fennel. 100% would not use them again. Most of the other places are very pastry-heavy. I did want to get something from a specialty snack place which I guess is headquartered semi-near me. It was going to be a faff to pick it up, so before reserving, I googled the place to see how much more it would cost to just order the snack online. It was the same!

I use it in New York with a local bakery. It's $3.99 and I usually get five croissants and muffins, so quite a good deal.

I wonder whether previously it would have been offered to staff and now they are pissed off about it?

There is a doughnut shop near me that does huge boxes of expensive treats and if you can catch them it's great. There is a vegan bakery which I've caught once and almost never has anything - that was a good day for me!
I tried the little Waitrose but it was all meat so it went half to the ex and half in the bin :(
I want them to get the grocery shops to do vegetarian bags but they don't so it's not worth the risk for me.
I have never tried Costa or Nero etc as I have assumed I'd get meat sandwiches

We have had a few and they're good. We are between a big town and a small city so there's quite a lot available It helps that we have teens who will eat most things, especially if they're made of bread or pastry...

We have quite a few shops nearby that do it. Best is M&S at the BP garage, had some really nice things from there, there are 5 of us so rarely anything goes to waste.

Co-op have been ok, only had a couple from them though.

Starbucks wouldn't bother again as someone else said, though you are getting stuff for 25% of retail value, when the muffin is £4 in the first place, it's not a great deal.

Subway do a good one, collect at 9.30am and they give you about 4 or 5 unfilled 12 inch subs and 3 or 4 cookies for £2. They are not end of the day leftovers, the assistant literally takes them out of the cabinet for you. I've collected on a Saturday morning and that's us sorted for weekend lunches.
I'm not sure our local Gregg's does it but will keep an eye out after reading this post.

We’ve had 3

1 was Starbucks £4 - we got a biscuit, a cheese rotaie, and chicken wrap, and 2 other sandwiches, we used all of that

1 was a Nisa shop £3.35 - a small chicken, 2 packs of decent sausages, 2 pasta salads and a pack of mashed carrot and parsnip. A lot of that is still in the freezer

the last one was from a one stop for £1.90 - 3 loaves of bread and 2 pre packed sandwiches. The birds have had 2 loads of bread but the rest have been used.

I rarely get notifications of what’s available in time to get a bag but what we have been able to get has been ok

Really? What did they say? The cheek! I'd be asking why on earth they signed up to it then and reminding them that they get paid for it!

"drones on?!" What a horrible way to talk about your mother in law?!

I've had one from the M&S at our local BP garage (lots of wraps, but they froze),
an ok one from the local COSTA
, but the real find has been the sushi counter at our local Waitrose. I can collect 7.30 to 8 on Fri pjs which is perfect for fitting road children's stuff and very well
Stocked. Books out early, though.

I got 4 huge, doorstop, full english breakfast butties - stone cold fried egg, sausage baked beans etc, all congealed into a fatty mess.

This is what an air fryer is for! It's revived a lot of cold "hot" sandwiches from various magic bag back into something delicious.

Speaking of full Englishes.... do look out to see if your local hotel chains are signed up. I live near a big hotel which does a breakfast buffet magic bag for £4. They hand you a cardboard clamshell and tell you to help yourself. I can get two full Englishes in the clamshell (one for me, one for my son) plus enough sausages that will reappear, cut up and in a stew, in that evening's dinner.

Always seemed to be things we wouldn’t eat which very much meant there was no point as it still went to waste

We get Toby Carvery roast dinners for around £3

TGTG is a brilliant app! I was getting some huge Morrisons magic boxes all through 2019, then they stopped doing them (locally to me anyway) and now they’ve restarted the times don’t fit around my work hours. The magic bags from small shops can be pretty rubbish, but Nisa were always quite good, eg a nice loaf and a couple of branded pizzas, plus a few packs of cooked meats or sausages, some snack bits, and fruit or veg, but it’s 12 miles each way and no other reason to go in that direction, so I wouldn’t want to use the diesel now. The only participating shop that I pass anyway on my way home from work is a Londis attached to a BP petrol station, the only bag I’ve tried from them contained a cheap white sliced loaf dated yesterday, a truly repulsive pretend-meat stripey bacon-coloured microwaveable thing in a damp bap, and two bags of chocolate coins with a BBE date three months ago. They just shrugged their shoulders and grinned when I complained, but I got a refund from TGTG (they’re pretty good at customer service).

There’s a cake shop near me that uses it so if I see it pop up I’ll usually get some (usually around 5 cupcakes and maybe some macaroons).

Millie’s cookies in Victoria station use it as well so if I happen to be in the vicinity I’ll
pick up one of their bags (can you tell I have a sweet tooth 😂😂). I am vegetarian though so my choice is slightly smaller.

I’ve had a couple of rubbish bags from cafes (grim looking boiled egg sandwiches and a very stale wholewheat croissant) but they’ve mostly been okay. They’re good to share with family and friends as well particularly when you get three loaves of bread!

I think the key thing with TGTG is to go in with low expectations then you won’t be disappointed.