Every day restaurants, food shops and supermarkets are forced to throw away food that has passed its expiry date and dishes prepared in advance that have gone unsold. A considerable waste that, fortunately, has in recent years been recognised and identified as one of the most negative and damaging aspects of the food industry.

Too Good To Go is the smartphone application that allows traders and restaurant owners to sell unsold food at reduced prices at the end of the day, and consumers to purchase products at a third of the retail price. By committing daily to the fight against food waste, Too Good To Go (a startup founded in Denmark and now gearing up for launch in the US with multimillion-dollar funding) is finding success in Italy too. "Currently the Too Good To Go app is present in more than 40 Italian cities, with over 2 million active users and 1,600,000 Magic Boxes sold in almost two years of operation. For 2021 our goal is to expand into medium and small-sized cities as well, to give everyone the opportunity to fight food waste," explains Eugenio Sapora, the company's country manager for Italy. Magic Boxes are the special containers that traders fill with unsold or near-expiry goods, which users can book through the app and then collect in store. The contents of the box are a surprise, but reflect the cuisine and menu of the establishment offering it. "The shops on the app range from patisseries and bakeries to delicatessens, from greengrocers to large-scale retailers, so inside their Magic Box consumers can really find a very wide and varied range of foods — ones that haven't been sold, but are still too good to throw away," adds Sapora.

The figures on food waste

The data on food waste reported by the startup founded by Danish entrepreneur Mette Lykke make for concerning reading: approximately one third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is wasted every year, amounting to around 1.6 billion tonnes. This means that in a year we waste around 51 tonnes of food per second. At this rate, food waste will increase by a third by 2030, when it will reach 2.1 billion tonnes — the equivalent of 66 tonnes wasted per second. The pandemic risked making the situation worse: "Like everyone else, the first lockdown wasn't easy for us — the closure of most shops and commercial establishments led to a significant drop in activity on the app, but it also allowed us at the same time to focus more on initiatives to raise consumer awareness of the food waste issue, with the aim of making everyone more conscious of it," says Sapora. "During the second half of 2020, on the other hand, we saw exponential growth in the number of new businesses joining the app and in the service in general: given the uncertainty caused by closures and reopenings, Too Good To Go proved an ideal solution for avoiding waste brought about by fluctuating demand, while at the same time attracting new customers to stores."

Too Good To Go and festive sweets

Too Good To Go's commitment goes beyond the app and continues with an awareness campaign that began in December and reaches its culmination during January 2021, with tips and recipes to avoid wasting Christmas sweets. From panettone to pandoro, the startup has worked to prevent waste by enlisting well-known pastry chefs Iginio Massari and Vincenzo Santoro, who share advice on how to repurpose leftover festive treats or ones found at a discount after the holidays are over. The #SaveThePanettone campaign once again draws attention to food waste — a problem that can be tackled with the help of a smartphone app too. "Reducing domestic food waste during this year, Christmas included, is certainly a positive result, one that moves in the direction of Too Good To Go's primary objective: eliminating food waste in every sense. It is important, however, not to forget our commercial partners, who have been severely affected in 2020 and for whom Christmas — along with the products associated with it — represents a significant slice of an entire year's work, and who are now facing the prospect of having to throw away and dispose of tonnes of food. Too Good To Go is committed to being at the forefront of offering concrete support to its partners through the app, while at the same time providing consumers with tips and tricks to make the most of festive sweets, even in January," concludes Sapora.