Too Good To Go takes aim at NZ food waste, but will businesses buy in?

Wednesday, 1 October 2025

A European food rescue platform is stepping into the New Zealand market to test whether local restaurants, cafes and supermarkets across the motu will turn their food waste into a new income stream.

Copenhagen-founded app Too Good To Go will launch in Auckland in October after entering Australia a year ago. The app connects food retailers, from bakeries to major supermarkets, with customers who want to buy discounted “surprise bags” of unsold food at the end of the day.

Customers download the marketplace app and typically pay about a third of the bag’s original retail value, while Too Good To Go clips the ticket for each purchase.

New Zealand director Joost Rietveld did not confirm how much the company took from each transaction, but said the app was designed to tackle food waste and create extra income for hospitality businesses.

“Today they’re throwing it in the bin, but in the future, they’re actually able to sell that,” Rietveld told The Post.

The company started in 2015 and now operates in 19 countries, with New Zealand set to become its 20th. The app is used across Europe and North America, with more than 300 million meals reportedly saved from landfill.

Rietveld said the company was rolling out in Auckland as a key area for market research before expanding its footprint in Aotearoa.

“We plan to launch in the greater Auckland area, and that’s a deliberate choice,” he said.

Australia’s rollout provided particular confidence for New Zealand with a million users signed up across the ditch since its launch a year ago. Meanwhile the local market was most similar to Norway compared with its other markets.

“One is that the size is very similar in terms of the number of inhabitants and number of businesses that operate in food service and retail,” Rietveld said. “The other thing is that it's geographically very long and quite hard to get from one place to another … logistics is quite a challenge.'

Too Good To Go would initially focus on independent Auckland retailers before adding larger chains, but Rietveld could not confirm any retailers that had signed up so far.

Economics for hospitality

He said Too Good To Go’s marketplace model was designed to make participation low-risk with businesses only paying if there was a sale.

“You never pay anything if it doesn’t add any value to your business, and we’re not locking anybody in.”

But consumers had trade-offs. Each retailer would create its own “surprise bag” of unsold food at the end of the day to list on the platform, which meant customers wouldn’t know what they would get and couldn’t request substitutions.

Three staff have already been hired and an Auckland office has opened, with further recruitment planned.

When asked about when the company was expected to break even in Aotearoa, Rietveld said it was focused on long-term success and expansion rather than a quick return.

“In New Zealand specifically, it’s more about whether our solution helps businesses in New Zealand. If that’s true, then maybe it will be worth not breaking even for the next three years, but actually investing in the growth instead.”

While the company was looking to test the New Zealand market, one of the drivers for its local launch was the belief that “Kiwis really care about the environment”, he said.

He was confident that local consumers and businesses would take up the service to limit food waste: “We have also seen that they tend to act when they can see an immediate outcome.”