Food waste app Too Good To Go announced that it has raised a further €6 million in funding to accelerate its mission to eliminate food waste globally, taking its total investment to €16 million. The new investment will fuel growth in four new countries this year, to reach a projected total of 100 million meals rescued by users by the end of 2020.
The free app connects customers to restaurants and stores that have unsold, surplus food. Since launching in Copenhagen in 2016, Too Good To Go has grown to 7.5 million users across nine countries in Europe, working with over 15,000 food retailers including Carrefour, Accor Hotels, YO! Sushi, Mandarin Oriental and Scandic.
This week, Too Good To Go reaches its 10 million meal milestone – the number of perfectly edible meals its users have rescued from being thrown away. This means the app has saved the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes of food or 20,000 of CO2 emissions from wasted food production – a leading cause of climate change.
With a third of all food produced currently being wasted, CEO Mette Lykke’s ambition is to create a global movement to tackle this issue. Before joining the food waste revolution, Mette co-founded Endomondo, a popular social fitness community with 35 million users which was sold to Under Armour for $85M in 2015.
The company, which has over 200 employees across Europe, is already bringing about change as part of its movement to end food waste. In France, Too Good To Go is petitioning to change date labelling from “Best before” to “Best before, not bad after” to reduce food waste at home. To date, 60,000 people have signed the petition with public support from supermarket chain, Carrefour.
“Too Good To Go has a unique opportunity to tackle a very serious environmental issue with a smart business model. Across the value chain and across borders, the issue of food waste is complex and hard to fix. By creating a new market for surplus food, we ensure more food gets eaten, making businesses and consumers winners in the process,” said Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go.
“The reality is that it’s standard practice for food businesses to throw away perfectly edible food. We give them the flexibility to offer up anything that’s still good to eat and sell it to consumers through the app at a discounted price. It’s a win for retailers, because they reduce waste, acquire customers and increase revenue, it’s a win for consumers who get great food for a reduced price, and it’s obviously a win for the environment which is our main motivation,” he added.
The latest round of funding has been led by existing investors and the board of directors including Preben Damgaard, co-founder of Navision (which was sold to Microsoft in 2002), Mike Lee, founder and former CEO of MyFitnessPal, and Jesper Lindhardt, former COO at Trustpilot.
