The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2015-2024
Too Good To Go sells leftover food as Surprise Bags - 120M users, 500M+ meals saved
Copenhagen startup lets bakeries and restaurants sell unsold food in discounted Surprise Bags via an app; 120M registered users, 500M+ meals saved.
Too Good To Go
What it had to solve
In 2015, five Danish friends noticed how much food Copenhagen's buffet restaurants discarded every night while many people could not afford restaurant meals; they set out to build a marketplace for food that would otherwise go to waste.
How it works
Too Good To Go is a Copenhagen-born app that sells surplus food in 'Surprise Bags': bakeries, restaurants and supermarkets list the food they would throw away at closing time at roughly half price, customers buy and pick it up, and the company takes a cut of each sale.
It was founded in 2015 by five Danish entrepreneurs - Thomas Bjørn, Stian Olesen, Klaus Bagge Pedersen, Brian Christensen and Adam Sigbrand - after they saw how much buffet restaurants in Copenhagen wasted. The app launched in Denmark in early 2016 and was an instant hit: in the first weeks, hundreds of businesses uploaded surplus food and thousands of users started saving it.
Danish entrepreneur Mette Lykke heard about the app on a bus ride in September 2016, invested in October, and became CEO in spring 2017. Her first move was contraction: she closed Too Good To Go in four of the ten countries it had entered because it had expanded before proving the model. Then it grew again - to 100 million users in 19 countries by 2024, and 120 million registered users with 180,000 partner businesses by 2025, with 500+ million meals saved.
The creative core was renaming waste as a product rather than running a guilt campaign. The company earns roughly $1.79 per bag plus retailer membership fees in the US; CNBC reported revenue of just under $162 million in 2023. US nonprofit ReFED calculated that if every US food retailer used a similar markdown mechanism, it would save a million tons of food a year.
Why it lands
- Names waste as a product: the Surprise Bag turns unsold food into a fun, discounted purchase instead of a guilt trip.
- Both sides win - stores earn on food they would trash, customers eat cheap, and less food is wasted.
- One simple ritual (order, pick up at closing time) scales from a single bakery to 180,000 partner businesses.
- A local Danish insight about buffet waste became a marketplace across 21 countries.
What it did
The app became an instant hit in Denmark within weeks; by 2024 the company claimed 120 million registered users, 180,000 partner businesses and 500+ million meals saved across 21 countries, and CNBC reported revenue of nearly $162 million in 2023.
What you can take
Don't sell guilt, sell a deal: a 'Surprise Bag' turns food that would be thrown away into a discounted product both sides want - the planet wins because saving is cheaper.
Since then
Too Good To Go expanded from Denmark to Norway, the UK and France in 2016, entered the US in 2020, and by 2025 ran in 21 countries with 120 million registered users and 180,000 partner businesses. It added grocery and parcel services plus software for retailers and raised about $158 million; the business reinvests rather than profits. The Surprise Bag format became the standard reference for market-based food-waste reduction and a template copied across Europe, though critics raise greenwashing concerns.
Sources
- This startup brings in $162 million a year helping people find food at huge discounts: It's 'the most genius app'
- Company Background and History
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