At first, everyone hunted for the yellow reduced labels in stores. Now, you can scan the shelves for reduced stock from the comfort of your own home. Except there's a catch: you don't have a clue what reduced stock you're buying.
Too Good to Go works by connecting customers to restaurants, supermarkets and cafes in their area that have an unsold surplus of food. By going on the app, you can find a huge range of places near where you live that offer food at cut prices throughout the day. You pay in advance - it normally costs one third of the original price of the items - and collect your 'magic' bag at a certain time.
With the cost of living skyrocketing, I wanted to see if you can really get a good meal out of these bags, and if they are value for money. You can get more food news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters
Read more: I tried a £4 Too Good To Go bag from Starbucks and I was like a kid at Christmas
I got the Morrison's Too Good to Go bag first. Except it wasn't just a bag. Imagine my surprise when I was passed a huge cardboard box over the counter. I hurried excitedly back to my car without really looking in the box, and went home as fast as I could to inspect the goodies.
The surprise continued when I actually looked in the box. It contained two bags of King Edward potatoes, two bags of baby potatoes, one bag of Albert Bartlet potatoes, four bags of sweet baby leaf mixed salad, one bag of rocket and baby leaf salad, a packet of blueberries, a chunk of pineapple and a slightly squished cucumber.
The amount of potatoes was a bit much. I would struggle to make much more than a potato salad with these offerings (I'm no Gordon Ramsay) , but mixed with other ingredients, the contents of this bag will set me up for a while. The bag (box) cost £3.09 on the app, but the contents bough separately and in date would have cost £12.11.
The second bag I got was from Spar in Mount Crescent, Swansea. Having worked for Spar part time whilst at university, I was pretty sure I knew what would be in this bag, as it was me who often reduced the short-dated stock. However, the bag exceeded my expectations as it was full of a wide variety of items.
This box contained a Mother's Pride white loaf, a tuna and sweetcorn salad, steak and gravy pie (hidden under the tuna salad) a breakfast roll, chicken bites, Soreen mini ginger loaves and some oranges. This bag had the makings of a full meal at least, with some good brands in there as well as Spar's own brand options.
I was happy with this bag. The only thing I turned my nose up at was the tuna salad, purely because I don't like tuna. But that is the beauty of these bags, you really don't know what you're getting. This bag cost me £3.09 but if the items in this bag were in date and full priced, it would have cost me £12.93.
The final bag I collected was from One Stop in Morriston. Having already seen the difference between the supermarket and convenience store bags, I had high hopes for this one.
I sent my partner out to pick it up and after about 10 minutes I received at text saying "this is a good one". The bag contained a pack of roast chicken slices, crispy potato slices, a sirloin steak, chicken tomato and basil pasta, a pack of two jam and cream scones and a pot of mango that said it was from Tesco. I was very excited about the steak, but a bit confused as to the mango pot — why was it from Tesco?
Again, there were at least two full meals in this bag, and it included dessert which I liked a lot. This bag did cost a little more, coming in at £3.35, but if the items in this bag were in date and full priced, it would have cost me £14.10, which is considerably more than the other stores.
Overall, from this visit, it does seem like the convenience stores put together more well-rounded bags of groceries, meaning if you are looking for meals on a budget, they are the ones to look for. However, as with every Too Good To Go bag, the contents change with each bag, so maybe the next time I buy one, Morrisons could come out on top.
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