TAMPA, Fla. — Every day, restaurants across the country throw out perfectly good food—but now, there’s an app to prevent that.
It’s called Too Good To Go, and it’s launching in Tampa Bay this month.
The Blind Tiger is one of the first businesses in Tampa Bay to start participating. On any given weekend, the cafe throws away five to seven percent of perfectly good food.
“We tried to find avenues or ways where we can donate it before it got close to that expiration date,” said owner Roberto Torres.
Torres said no matter what they did, inevitably, good food was ending up in the landfill. That’s when he found out about the app, which actually started in Europe back in 2016.
“They were doing a very aggressive launch in the US, and Tampa became one of the cities that they were going to expand, so I immediately signed up all seven restaurants,” said Torres.
The app allows restaurants to resell their surplus food at a discount price, saving 100,000 meals every day worldwide.
“The app is very simple: you sign up, you create an account, just like you would any delivery service or any restaurant app, and there it’s going to list all the restaurants that are accessible via the app. You pay on the app, and then you have to go and pick up the food,” said Torres.
Meals can be found for as low as one-third of the retail price, saving the customer and the business money.
“The main idea is the sustainability aspect and making sure we aren’t throwing food away,” said Torres.
For customer Molly Thelisdort, this is the first time she has heard about the app, and she’s eager to check out which restaurants are participating.
“It concerns me how much food we waste all over the country but especially this part of the state, and there are so many people who can use lower-cost food,” said Thelisdort.
Torres hopes more restaurants follow his lead because he truly believes Too Good Too Go is also too good to fail.
“I think every single restaurant should be on this app,” said Torres.
