The statistics on food waste are staggering. According to this recent article by BBC Earth around 1.3bn tonnes of food gets wasted globally each year – accounting for one third of all food produced.
This number is shocking enough but it leaves a particularly bad taste in the mouth once you find out that between 720m and 811m people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – not to mention the impact of food waste on climate change, as this article by the WWF explains.
The good news is individuals and corporations alike are beginning to wake up to this problem. This is where food waste apps come in with two of the biggest players being Too Good To Go and Olio.
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So how do they work? Businesses sell 'magic bags' of their unsold food at a reduced price (usually around a third of the original price) on Too Good To Go, with the exact contents being a surprise until you pick it up (it's down to chance what isn't sold that day, after all). You pay in advance and have to pick up your food during a certain time frame.
Meanwhile people give away their surplus food for free on Olio, first uploading a picture of it and details like expiration dates. Like Too Good To Go you 'request' the food through the app then message the person giving it away to organise a pick-up time from their house. Olio also lets users become 'Food Waste Heroes' –volunteers who pick up lots of unsold food from local businesses and share it as widely as possible, all for free.
I've always been intrigued by these apps but they also raise some unanswered questions for me. How much food do you get exactly? Will I save money by using them? How much food can I get for free? Will the food be fresh or stale? And, most importantly, are these apps practical solutions to the food waste problem?
Keen to find out more I challenged myself to survive off Too Good To Go and Olio for a week in Cardiff. Here's how it went.
Monday
On the first day I soon realised that Too Good To Go is more fail-safe if you want to guarantee yourself a square meal. On Olio people were giving away random items like a single loaf of bread, doughnuts past their use-by date, and stock cubes but these were not very useful or satisfying in isolation.
There were some better listings, like a bag of vegetables, several miles away from me but the car journey would not have been worth it. So on the first day I focused on Too Good To Go and occasionally refreshed Olio in case anything more substantial popped up.
For breakfast I nabbed a Magic Bag of three giant pretzels, fresh and still warm, from Auntie Anne's in St David's shopping centre – one original and two cinnamon, which usually cost around £4 each – for just £3.59 in total. Over the course of the week, I discovered Auntie Anne's is one of the best options on the app as, amazingly, they give away their surplus goods three times a day every day.
I ate one pretzel for breakfast and, realising it would pay off to be strategic, I decided to save the other two for breakfast for the next couple of days.
Next came lunch. That morning I'd also seen a vegetarian cafe called Green Shoots in Cardiff University was offering a few Magic Bags for £3 so I reserved one before they ran out. When I arrived just before closing time in the afternoon armed with plastic containers (most businesses pack the food ready for you but some request you bring your own containers) I was allowed to pick out for myself three options from the surplus food.
I went for a vegan mozzarella and sun-dried tomato panini, a beetroot salad, and what appeared to be an aubergine lasagne. All this food was enough for dinner too – and I can safely say it was some of the best veggie food I've ever had.
I was keen to stock up on groceries for the rest of the week with the intention to make my own meals and avoid driving around so much to pick up Magic Bags. I'd noticed there were a few supermarkets and convenience stores offering Magic Bags on the app including Morrisons and multiple Spar outlets across the city.
I reserved one from the Spar in Llandaff but was sorely disappointed when I arrived to learn that my order had just been cancelled minutes before due to a problem with the contents of the bag.
Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated issue I encountered throughout the week and is something new users of the app should be aware of. You must cancel your reservation at least three hours before the pick-up time but businesses can cancel your orders at any time if they don't have surplus food to give away.
Total cost: £6.59
Tuesday
A quick spell in the oven made the Auntie Anne's pretzel as good as new for breakfast and I popped the final pretzel in my freezer to keep it fresh until tomorrow.
I encountered tumbleweed yet again when I scrolled through Olio in the morning so I focused on Too Good To Go again today – this time reserving a Magic Bag from The Atma Lounge, a vegan cafe in the Capitol Shopping Centre.
I couldn't choose my food this time but it didn't matter. I was given heaps of delicious chickpea curry, fragrant jeera rice, and warming red lentil dal – easily worth three or four portions – for just £3.59. I ate some of this for lunch then popped the rest in my fridge for the next few days.
In the evening I decided to have another try at securing a bag from Spar in Cowbridge Road East and luckily this time I was successful. My bag cost just £3.09 and contained plenty of food: 11 spicy chicken drumsticks, a tuna mayo baguette, a chicken curry ready meal for two, a small trifle, and two chicken and mushroom pasties.
Everything was expiring either that day or the next day so I took some time to think how I wouldn't waste anything myself. I ended up freezing everything except for the tuna baguette and trifle, which I ate for my dinner.
Though I was happy with my bag I'd been banking on some fresher produce from Spar as it seemed my meals were gradually turning more beige and processed. So I refreshed Olio that evening and luckily two enticing listings had appeared close to my house – a Food Waste Hero was offering bread and rolls from artisan baker Alex Gooch and another Food Waste Hero was offering lots of different salad, fruit, veg and hummus from Tesco.
The free Alex Gooch offering was by far the best discovery I made throughout this entire challenge. I arrived at the Food Hero's house, unsure what to expect, and ended up taking home two huge slabs of ciabatta and a giant garlicky foccacia as long as my arm, which I was allowed to choose from a selection of different breads.
I'm no bread baker but all the loaves seemed very fresh to me and I sliced them all up and stored them in my freezer immediately. As for the fruit, veg, and hummus, I picked out the ones I wanted and arranged to pick them up the next morning from the Food Waste Hero's house.
Total cost: £6.68
Wednesday
I set off to pick up my Olio request first thing: four salad bags, a bag of green beans, a tub of lemon and coriander hummus, and a tub of mixed fruit. The lady had kindly packaged it all away for me in the carrier bag which she gave me as soon as she opened the door.
For breakfast I ate the final pretzel with the tub of fruit. Since all the salad had expired the previous day I spent some time figuring out how to extend its shelf life. Patting the salad dry and storing them with paper towels to sop up any moisture seemed to do the trick foccacia and this hack worked remarkably well for the rest of the week.
For lunch I had a concoction of the hummus, salad, and foccacia – not very inspiring but tasty and filling nonetheless. Dinner was also sorted: some of the chickpea curry, rice, and dal, along with some of the salad and green beans.
Total cost: £0
Thursday
Still ploughing my way through the hummus tub I ate it again along with the foccacia and some salad for breakfast. But I fancied something different for breakfast for the remaining few days so I had another look on Too Good To Go and reserved a magic bag from Parson's bakery in Llanishen, which I picked up in the afternoon.
Once again the contents were very impressive for the price. I got two jam doughnuts, one chicken pasty, one beef pasty, two custard slices, a chicken mayo baguette, and a sourdough loaf for just £3.99.
The doughnuts were a little stale (nothing a bit of water and few minutes in the oven couldn't fix though) but the rest all appeared fresh – the pasties were even slightly warm.
With all these new bakery goods I spent a bit more time thinking about what I could freeze. For lunch I ate some of the chicken drumsticks with some more of the rice along with some salad, green beans, and the last of the hummus. I ate the chicken mayo baguette and a jam doughnut for dinner, froze the rest of the chickpea curry and dal as well as the sourdough loaf, and popped the rest of the food from Parsons Bakery in the fridge.
Total cost: £3.99
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
With so much food to get through the last three days were pretty straightforward and just a case of fishing things out of the fridge and freezer.
I ate the last of the rice for dinner Friday, along with some of the chicken curry ready meal, green beans, and salad. The pasties and remaining jam doughnut made for three filling breakfasts.
My other lunches and dinners were a mixture of salad, green beans, bread, chicken drumsticks, the rest of the chicken curry, and the remaining chickpea curry and dal. The custard slices were a lovely sweet treat to end the week.
Total cost: £0
Final thoughts
My week living off food waste apps in Cardiff was a success overall and I'll definitely use them again from time to time. There was a great variety on offer (172 businesses in the capital have partnered with Too Good To Go) and I got enough food to last me longer than a week. In fact I'm still making my way through the Alex Gooch bread at the time of writing this article.
I also saved a lot of money in the process, spending £17.26 in total for an amount of food probably worth triple or quadruple that price. It almost seemed criminal that I could get so much for free, too, without any questions being asked – I was sure there had to be a catch but there wasn't.
Quality and freshness-wise I was also impressed with almost everything and for anything that was already stale or about expire my oven and freezer easily came to the rescue. This week challenged me to turn a blind eye to use-by dates and think of effective ways to store my food and extend its shelf life. Before I would have hesitated to eat expired hummus but now I was forced to stomach it (literally) and it didn't do my any harm.
Are the apps a practical solution to the food waste problem though? For the most part I think so but I think it largely depends on where you live. Though the businesses on Too Good To Go are dotted all around Cardiff the app is probably most suited to residents in the city centre since most of the shops are located there or nearby – making them easier to access by walking, cycling, or public transport.
I live in a suburb, with only one option within walking distance from me, so at the start of the week I found myself driving around a lot just to pick up Magic Bags so my car emissions probably cancelled out the environmental benefits of saving the food. Olio is better in this respect as good listings can pop up in your neighbourhood though from my experience these were far more unpredictable. In future I would probably arrange to pick up orders that are further away only if I was already going to be in the vicinity.
I also probably wouldn't get a Magic Bag from a convenience store like Spar again as, while I was lucky with my items, the breadth of choice means you could end up with things you don't – or can't – eat and end up throwing away yourself. Indeed t here also didn't appear to be an option to request any dietary requirements for your Magic Bag except for some vegetarian bags at carveries.
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