What I got from Whole Foods on a Too Good To Go order
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Chelsea and her Whole Foods surprise bags from Too Good To Go. Photo: Chelsea Brasted/Axios
Whole Foods recently joined up with Too Good To Go, the food- and money-saving app that connects consumers and businesses with surplus food to battle food waste.
Why it matters: I'm the friend who happily bags up your leftovers to avoid wasting food, so when I read about Whole Foods joining the app, I decided to give it a shot.
Catch up quick: More than 450 Whole Foods markets started offering surprise bags of surplus food through Too Good To Go last month, according to Axios' Kelly Tyko.
- When I first read about the app, New Orleans didn't have any participating shops, so I was excited to see the Whole Foods addition.
- The store, which has three New Orleans-area locations, sells two surprise bag options through Too Good to Go.
- They include a bakery bag for $6.99, and a prepared foods bag for $9.99. The bakery items are supposed to total at last $21, and the prepared foods at least $30.
How it works: Each store has a limited number of the bags, so to score one, you have to log on to the app pretty early in the morning and complete the purchase through the app. (I snagged mine around 7am.)
- Pick-up is scheduled for near closing time. At Whole Foods' location Uptown, pick-up was between 8pm and 9pm.
- What's inside each bag is a surprise, so this probably isn't a good fit for specific dietary requirements.
Dig in: I scored one of each surprise bag.
- Inside my bakery bag, I got four apple turnovers, mini bagels and chocolate chip scones. The pastry on the turnovers was already going soft, but came back to life in the toaster oven. The rest went straight into the freezer for another day. Retail value: $20.97.
- In my prepared foods bag, I got a small container of broccoli crunch salad, a quart of minestrone soup, a chicken and goat cheese sandwich and meal prep containers of beef and mashed potatoes, General Tso's chicken and grilled chicken with fettuccine Alfredo. Retail value: Unknown, because not everything was marked, but it did all have 50% off stickers.
Yes, but: There was a mix-up at the prepared foods counter, so my bag accidentally went to someone else.
- Instead, a manager threw another one together at the last minute, noting that he'd added extra to compensate for the wait.
The bottom line: Everything tasted fine. Not stellar, just fine. But it's grocery store prepared foods sold at a discount, so that's not a knock.
- I would definitely order through the app again, but a grocery trip at 8pm is going to be a rarity for me.