In recent years, consumer awareness of the importance of combating food waste has grown, which is supported by data. Last year, Too good to take awaythe social impact company responsible for the world’s largest app for storing excess food across thousands of establishments and combating food waste, recorded a 28% increase in stored packages in Spain compared to 2022. This means: In just one year, more than 6.6 million surprise packages were saved through the app in our country. This corresponds to avoiding the emission of more than 16,500 tons of CO2eq. To date, the app has saved more than 17 million surprise grocery packages since its launch in Spain in September 2018.
This good development is also reflected in the growth of the Too Good To Go community. Happened an increase in the number of users by 18% Grocery savings, with 1,389 being the record number of packs saved by the same user last year. In addition, the app also experienced a 29% increase in new businesses Like many others, Eroski, Vips and Ginos joined the initiative in 2023 in order to be able to dispose of their excess food and thus avoid waste.
New solution for retail
As part of its mission to continue to provide solutions to address the challenge of food waste across other links in the value chain, Too Good To Go will launch in 2024 Too Good To Go platform. It is a new modular solution for the comprehensive management of surplus food This enables food retailers, from hypermarkets to supermarkets to convenience stores, to control, optimize and unlock revenue from food that is nearing its consumption date to reduce food waste.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, the Too Good To Go platform keeps track of these products and helps redistribute surpluses effectively. In addition, it is the only system of its kind, thanks to its integration with the world’s largest surplus food storage app, which has more than 85 million registered users worldwide.
According to him European Food Retail Institute, The costs associated with food waste average nearly 2% of grocery retailers’ net sales and are almost equal to their average margins. “At Too Good To Go we work with some of the world’s most important food companies, such as Carrefour, Auchan, SPAR, ALDI, Coop and many more.” Every day we bring thousands of users into stores and help our partners through surplus food Generate revenue and customer frequency. With the launch of the Too Good To Go platform, we can now also support them with in-store inventory management, helping them significantly improve both their bottom line and food waste.says Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go.
5 modules for agile and personalized implementation
The Too Good To Go platform currently integrates 5 modules into a single interface, offering partners a modular solution that adapts to their food surplus management strategy. These modules are: Date Control, Recommendations, Smart Discount, Marketplace Surprise Packages and Donations.
How it works: Main functions
Date control
Grocery store employees spend hours of work every day manually checking the expiration and best-before dates of products. However, by digitizing date verification, in-store inventory management becomes much more efficient. The Too Good To Go platform’s algorithms generate and display on store associates’ PDAs a list of soon-to-expire products, clearly organized by shelf location, daily or weekly, based on product expiration. Therefore, Manual controls are reduced to just 1-7% of all products, with the resulting saving of up to one hour per day per employee. Additionally, the automated process reduces human error and the number of expired products on shelves, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and less food waste.
recommendations
About the PDA, Too Good To Go platform Recommends to warehouse employees exactly what to do with each expired product, based on predefined and customizable rules and preferences adapted to the establishment: for example, printing a discount label with a discount optimized for in-store sales; Create a surprise package to sell in the app. or donate the item. This systematic approach leaves little room for error for the employee when making allocations and provides different distribution options, allowing for more opportunities to use excess food.
Smart discount
“Most food retailers simply print out a sticker with the best-before date and a fixed discount rate. These discounts do not take into account things like inventory levels or historical data to determine whether a discontinued product will be sold at a particular store at a particular time. In this way, they leave significant revenue behind.”Add Marie Lindström, director of Too Good To Go in Spain.
The Too Good To Go platform’s AI processes large data sets to optimize discount levels and apply offers tailored to each product, systematically improving sales of expiring discounted foods. By connecting to a mobile printer, employees can instantly print a label with the assigned discount to sell the product in the store. These labels display the product name, new price, discounted quantity and a new barcode to make payment easier.
Marketplace surprise packages
Directly from your PDA, Store employees can easily allocate excess food to surprise packages from Too Good To Go and sell them in the app, where users can buy them and pick them up in store.
Donate
With Too Good To Go platformStore managers can download analytics-ready CSV files containing the list of donated products or connect to their donation application or third-party ERP via an API.
Technological inventory optimization
Available worldwide, The Too Good To Go platform is easily customizable and integrated into retailers’ systems. It also runs on the most common PDAs, such as those from Zebra. Tim Stoddard, Managing Director and SVP EMEA at Zebra Technologies, says: “Independent software vendor partners like Too Good To Go play an important role in how Zebra solves problems for retail and hospitality companies. “Together, we enable our customers to optimize their inventory, improve the customer experience and combat food waste with hardware and software solutions that make a positive difference.”