Canadians flocking to food rescue apps to reduce grocery bills and waste

TORONTO - When Gillian Pulfer picked up roasted candy potato soup, flank steak and rooster salad from a Toronto Pusateri’s Nice Meals for $10 final weekend, the deal was too good to not brag about.

“It’s a extra high-end, luxurious grocery retailer...so most individuals don’t essentially have the funds to go store there, however you’re saving cash and also you’re getting good meals,” mentioned Pulfer.

After chowing down, she let her Instagram followers in on her secret: She discovered the haul on Too Good to Go. The app is one in all many uniting deal-seekers with eating places and grocers keen to maintain growing older meals that’s nonetheless match for consumption out of the trash in trade for a small charge.

Customers of apps like Too Good To Go, Flashfood, Suggestions and Olio say they've paid wherever from $3 to $10 for ready lunches or dinners, per week’s value of greens and fruit, a number of loaves of bread, pastry packing containers and even, total pizzas or desserts.

The financial savings usually go a good distance, mentioned Eric Tribe, Flashfood’s chief market officer.

“Over the vacations, we had a father who wrote in and thanked us as a result of he’d been let go from his job attributable to COVID-19 and he used the cash saved on Flashfood to purchase stocking stuffers for his youngsters,” mentioned Tribe.

The app, which is utilized by grocery store conglomerate Loblaw Corp., was began by Toronto entrepreneur Josh Domingues in 2016, after his chef sister threw out $4,000 of meals following a catered occasion.

The app provides produce, meat, fish, bread, dairy and pantry staples nearing their greatest earlier than date and sometimes marked down by not less than 50 per cent. Some objects final for weeks, if frozen or cooked. Others have a day or two left.

Orders are retrieved in supermarkets, which usually mark objects nearing their greatest earlier than dates down or donate them to charities, meals banks and farms for animal feed.

However these strategies nonetheless depart grocers answerable for 1 / 4 of the nation’s meals waste, so Flashfood focused that portion completely, mentioned Tribe. (The app doesn't divert meals from charities, he added.)

To this point, Flashfood has stored greater than 13.5 million kilograms of meals out of landfills and saved customers a collective $90 million.

Nonetheless, Second Harvest, a charity redistributing unsold objects to folks in want, estimates that nearly 60 per cent or 35.5 million tonnes of meals produced in Canada is wasted yearly. About 32 per cent or 11.2 million tonnes of that misplaced meals is edible and might be redirected to folks in want.

“Some folks declare this meals waste might be solved by downloading an app,” mentioned Maria Corradini, the Arrell Chair in Meals High quality on the College of Guelph.

“That’s most likely not true, however after all they will have a contribution to decreasing this burden.”

She believes higher stock planning and use of synthetic intelligence would go even additional to addressing meals waste.

Too Good To Go’s nation supervisor for Canada agrees stock administration is vital, however mentioned, “matching provide and demand could be very complicated” and no restaurant desires to provide much less solely to seek out it will possibly’t serve late clients.

Too Good To Go principally offers with eating places, bakeries, and butchers, but additionally companions with grocery and comfort shops.

Customers of the app, which was based in Copenhagen in 2016 and expanded to Canada final July, order forward earlier than fetching objects at designated instances.

What they decide up is a thriller as a result of companies promote “shock baggage,“ and whereas some provide hints about their contents, others don’t.

For instance, Italian meals purveyor Eataly advertises some $8 baggage as having charcuterie components, however McEwan Meals, celeb chef Mark McEwan’s grocery store, shares no clues about its $8 baggage.

Toronto bakery Daan Go Cake Lab’s baggage have featured cake slices or its well-known character macarons. Some merely weren’t offered that day, however others have cracks or blemishes the bakery’s posh clientele wouldn’t settle for.

Signing up for Too Good To Go was a no brainer, mentioned chief working officer James Canedo.

“As cooks, you by no means wish to see meals wasted. It’s virtually sacred for us,” he mentioned.

“So many individuals on the market don’t have the identical privileges, so for meals to be wasted, that's one thing we’re making an attempt to forestall.”

Corradini lauds these sentiments and mentioned the apps’ waste discount targets are noble, however there are dangers.

Whereas some apps solely take care of respected distributors staffed with workers educated in dealing with meals, others like Olio permit anybody to arrange meals at house or promote objects they will’t end.

“I'd by no means go for one thing that has been opened since you by no means know what went on there,” Corradini mentioned.

She added that even meals from grocers and eating places must be examined carefully earlier than consuming and clients ought to prepare dinner, freeze, put together or eat something they purchase that is because of go off quickly in a short time.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Jan. 23, 2022.