Why throw out food as a cafe, restaurant, or grocery store owner when you can continue to sell goods to consumers? As a consumer, getting food at half price or less sounds like a good deal to me. Too Good to Go does that, allowing consumers to rescue food near them to help the environment by reducing food waste.
Try something new at a discounted price at local bakeries, grocery stores, restaurants, and cafes. This sounds like a great idea, but are they truly contributing to sustainability efforts within the food industry?
AMDP Standards
Triple Bottom Line (TBL) It is a significant and increasingly used socio-environmental framework aiming towards sustainable development. The TBL framework argues that it has severe limitations, such as human and natural capital (Rambaud et al., 2015).
Corporate Social Responsibility It is limited to win-win regarding sustainability situations, assuming it makes good business sense and enhances shareholder value (Banerjee, 2008).
Social Enterprise Also known as the “Social enterprise zoo,” it combined social and market goals in substantially different ways (Defourny, 2021).
Carbon Footprint Total greenhouse gas emissions are directly and indirectly caused by individuals or organizations (Michigan, 2024).
Too Good To Go
Too Good To Go claims to be a social impact company on a mission to solve food waste together. Its app is currently the largest marketplace for surplus food. The app connects users to discounted food items that otherwise would go to waste.
How it works: the app is simple to use. Once users download the app, they can scroll through it and discover surprise bags available at stores and restaurants near them. They can reserve their bag and pay online once they find a store they would like to purchase. Once the order is placed, they can pick up their bag at the storefront from which they bought it. Too Good to Go claims that consumers are saving from food going to waste and bettering the planet. Let's see what experts have to say about this.
Too Good to Go claims that saving one meal (1 surprise bag = 2.2. Lbs of food) from going to waste avoids 6 lbs of CO2E emission, 2.8 M^2 of land use per year, and 214 gallons of water (2024).
In addition to its impact calculation report, Too Good to Go is also a certified B Corp, with a score of 93.4 in 2024. B Corp is a business certification that measures a company’s social and environmental performance. B Corporation claims that a “B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials” (2024).
Too Good to Go" Environmental, social and Governance (ESG) report backs up the company's claims of saving food from being disposed of, which they call a “surplus of food”. The ESG report claims Too Good to Go saves food in two different scenarios:
In the Reference Scenario, surplus food is being disposed of via common waste treatment pathways (ESG Report, 2024).
Alternative Scenario: The surplus food is “saved” by Too Good to Go and consumed by consumers (ESG Report, 2024).
Critics and Reviews
Reviews state that an app can be a catalyst for sustainable SB by examining both the perspectives of users and providers. The TGTG case study is significant because its results show that mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular (2021). That being said, very little academic research has examined the value of Too Good To Go and similar apps to bring the gif against food waste (Apostolidis et al., 2021; Davies et al., 2017; Harvey et al., 2019). Regarding social movement, TGTG has set success in bakeries and supermarkets but, in the future, should focus on being a catalyst for sustainable social businesses (2021).
Statista, in 2019, proclaimed that most mobile app users in France are 55 years old or younger. 80.6% of French customers are between the ages of 50 and 64 and buy online. In addition to the mobile app that is geared towards a younger age demographic, they should add a website to reach the older generation.
*ADD in an additional paragraph on financials here
To Invest or Not to Invest… That is The Question
Based on the ESG report, the company's value proposition, and expert reviews, I recommend that AMDP choose to invest. Too Good to Go is an up-and-coming and constantly improving company that AMDP should consider investing in due to its commitment to being socially responsible and environmentally sustainable.
*Add in a deeper analysis
Work Cited
Apostolidis, C., Brown, D., Wijetunga, D., Kathriarachchi, E., 2021. Sustainable value co-
creation at the Bottom of the Pyramid: using mobile applications to reduce food
waste and improve food security. J. Mark. Manag. 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/
0267257X.2020.1863448.
Banerjee, S. B. (2007). Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad and the ugly.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing
B Corp Certification Demonstrates a Company’s Entire Social and Environmental Impact.” B
Corp Certification Demonstrates a Company’s Entire Social and Environmental Impact., www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Carbon Footprint Factsheet.” Center for Sustainable Systems,
css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability-indicators/carbon-footprint-factsheet. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Defourny, J., Nyssens, M., & Brolis, O. (2021). Testing Social Enterprise Models Across the
World: Evidence From the “International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 50(2), 420–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020959470
Rambaud, A., & Richard, J. (2015). The “Triple Depreciation Line” instead of the “Triple
Bottom Line”: Towards a genuine integrated reporting. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 33, 92–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.012
Statista, 2019. Applis de divertissement : ˆAge moyen des utilisateurs français 2017
[WWW Document]. Statista. URL https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/912120/repa
rtition-utilisateurs-applications-entertainment-tranche-age-france/ (accessed
4.18.21).
Too Good To Go. (2024). ESG report: Our approach at Too Good To Go. Too Good To Go
V1.1. Retrieved from https://www.toogoodtogo.com/en/movement/esg
Vo-Thanh, T., Zaman, M., Hasan, R., Rather, R. A., Lombardi, R., & Secundo, G. (2021). How a mobile app can become a catalyst for sustainable social business: The case of Too Good To Go. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 171, 120962-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120962
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