I’ve been using their app for some time now and really like the concept: Basically it allows restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets etc to announce when they have stuff leftover that they’d usually throw away at the end of the day. You can browse those nearby shops in the app and reserve a “surprise bag” for a small amount, usually around a third of the regular price, but it varies. In the pickup timeframe (usally around 30-60min before their closing time) you go there, show that you’ve reserved the bag in your app, confirm that you’ve received it and happily walk home with a ton of surprise food for super cheap.
After using it for a while I can especially recommend looking for food stalls at farmers markets as they often have lots of stuff leftover that they don’t want to take back home when packing up so they’re often super generous. Bakeries are also great, I regularly get a week’s supply of bread, buns, pastries and cake for like 3-5€.
EDIT: While it’s made in Denmark the app works globally or at least all of EuropeAFAIK, definitely works fine with lots of participating shops in Germany.
Unpopular opinion: i think the whole concept is just “selling a problem” instead of solving it. All the participating stores now can “green”-wash their hands and do literlay nothing against foodwaste and are just building am industry around it. Rather than ordering or producing less products in the first place.
Have you ever worked at a small bakery or cafe? It’s basically impossible to know exactly how many customers youre going to have on any given day.
They could always underproduce, sure, but my guess is that then businesses that care about cutting down on waste would lose business to places that regularly overproduce, when customers started choosing the place that was never out of stock of their favorites, or was always offering a wider selection. Underproduction by companies trying to responsibly reduce waste would probably benefit the largest corporations, with their better magins due to economy of scale, who are also more able to lose money in some areas just to drive business to other departments. Maybe that’s partially on the customers and their choices, but I think the idea behind this app is a good way to encourage competition, and benefits smaller, more local businesses.
Also this allows places to experiment more. Not sure everyone will enjoy your new recipe? Here’s an established way to recoup costs at the end of the day, to at least break even. Bakeries for as long as I can remember have been discounting “day old” product - this app creates a handy centralized maketplace for it. While I’m all for more responsible consumption, what you’re advocating for requires not just more responsible businesses, but more responsible consumers to make sacrifices to support them, enough to make up the difference in potential lost business. How many people are going to add an extra stop in their errands to visit a business they know is often or even occassionally out of the product they want, when they know another, more wasteful business always has it available?
I guess I disagree that this app helps businesses “do nothing” about food waste- I see it as a way to help (especially small) businesses throw away less food. Can it be abused; can businesses still wildly overproduce? sure, but many were already doing so before this, and will continue to do so as a matter of caring about maximizing profit. that doesn’t take away from the waste the app does help reduce, and the help driving customers to, and breaking even on unsold product it provides small businesses - businesses who are imho more likely than large conglomorates and chains to care about being socially and enviornmentally responsible in other ways, too, not just reducing food waste.
I disagree, at least don’t see that for any of the stores participating in my area. They don’t like overproducing either, everything they throw away is a loss for them. But it’s also difficult to predict how much you’ll be able to sell on any given day. Bakeries for example usually bake only once a day in the early morning and they have to make an educated guess about how much of each item will be sold that day, but it’s never gonna be a perfect guess. Sometimes they’re out early, a few customers will be disappointed and the shop will make a tiny bit less profit that day, and some other times they produce a bit too much that they won’t be able to sell the next day so they’d have to throw it out. I just don’t see how it’s greenwashing trying to avoid that by finding takers for the extra stuff using this app. If someone eats the food then it’s not wasted food.
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