Food waste app Too Good To Go has raised a further €6 million (£5.3 million) in funding to grow its business of rescuing surplus meals from restaurants, hotels and supermarkets.
Existing investors have led the latest funding round, taking total investment to €16 million.
The free app allows users to “rescue” surplus meals from restaurants and stores that have unsold, surplus food sold off at a discount price.
Too Good To Go has grown to 7.5 million users across nine countries in Europe since launching in Copenhagen in 2016. It works with over 15,000 food establishments including those run by Carrefour, Accor Hotels, YO! Sushi and Mandarin Oriental.
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 company also hopes to have 50 million users by the end of next year.
This week, Too Good To Go reached its 10-millionth 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.
Led by CEO Mette Lykke, Too Good To Go has over 200 employees across Europe
Before joining Too Good To Go, Lykke co-founded Endomondo, a popular social fitness community with 35 million users which was sold to Under Armour for $85 million in 2015.
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 a petition with public support from supermarket chain Carrefour.
Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go, said: “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.
“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.”
Board directors of Too Good To Go include Mike Lee, founder and former CEO of MyFitnessPal; Preben Damgaard, co-founder of Navision (which was sold to Microsoft in 2002); and Jesper Lindhardt, former COO at Trustpilot.
In Britain, almost 900,000 perfectly edible, freshly prepared meals end up in the bin every day, according to The Guardian, because they haven’t been sold in time by restaurants and cafes.
This means that more than 320 million meals are thrown away by British food establishments every year – enough meals for everyone in the UK five times over, according to Too Good To Go.
