Too Good to Go ramps up efforts to ‘clean up’ NZ's food waste problem
Tuesday, 21 April 2026
European food waste reduction platform Too Good to Go, which expanded into New Zealand at the end of last year, says uptake of its app has exceeded its expectations.
The Danish company - founded in 2015 as a way to rescue food waste from buffets - says more than 65,000 meals have been saved by 70,000 Kiwis using its platform so far.
About 350 food businesses, restaurants, cafes, and retailers are listed on the platform, which sells unsold food in bundled up “surprise bags” at discounted prices at between 50-75% of regular prices.
Too Good To Go New Zealand country manager Joost Rietveld said the level of buying on the app had “positively surprised” the company.
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“Almost all the bags are being picked up in New Zealand, and that gives us a very clear indication this is a problem we are solving, and it's a solution that's interesting for consumers,” Rietveld told The Post.
“That is irreversible impact that we've made. That food would have gone into the bin, and now actually people have picked it up and consumed it, and so we've actually made a positive change in the whole food cycle.”
Baker's Delight and Daily Bread are some of the app’s biggest partners, along with Domino's Pizza, Sushi Mall and Beau Deli.
“There are more stores than we expected that have got on board, and the same for the users … adoption overall has been higher than we anticipated.”
Too Good to Go has this week expanded into Wellington, completing the company’s nationwide expansion.
It launched in Auckland in October before expanding into Christchurch and other towns across New Zealand. The company typically enters a new market by starting in its largest city.
Rietveld said that each time they saw rising excitement from consumers, and heard from businesses that the app was adding real value, it strengthened their confidence to keep growing and expanding.
According to Love Food Hate Waste, $3 billion worth of food is wasted in New Zealand every year.
While the amount of food being wasted is slowly declining, with less food being sent to landfill compared to previous years, the total volume of waste remains high at approximately 1.22 million tonnes, according to the Ministry for the Environment.
The 2025 Rabobank-KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey found the average Kiwi household wastes 10.9% of the food it buys, a reduction from 12.2% in 2023.
A spokesperson for Love Food Hate Waste said if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest contributor to global carbon emissions, behind China and the United States.
“Thirty per cent of all food waste happens at home, meaning households have real power to make a difference not only to the environment but also to how much money they are throwing away,” the spokesperson said.
Food waste was a massive problem - and opportunity, globally, said Rietveld.
“What we know globally is that 40% of all the food that's produced is being wasted, and that's across the whole value chain of food. Everything we've learned about New Zealand is there's not a significantly different opportunity here than there is in other countries that we have operated in Europe, in US, Canada and in Australia so far.
“We've got off to a great start, and we are super happy with the pioneering stores that have gotten on board first, but there’s a lot of work to do.”
Rietveld said he believed there had been strong up take in the Too Good to Go app due to the cost of living crisis forcing Kiwi consumers be more savvy with their money. The fuel disruption situation with conflict in the Middle East could also be motivating more businesses to get on board.
The platform was being used as a tool to combat rising costs and create more revenue streams and business growth, he said. “When you're in a crisis situation, businesses that only focus on cost production are often left empty handed at the end.
“We don't know how long this is going to take, and we try to have business conversations with our partners [where we] say, you need to continue to think about, how do I keep getting people into my shops?
“The discussion we have with partners is to think about consumers that are coming into your shop, that didn't know you before, coming into your shop for different reason, and then potentially coming back as a full price customer later. We're trying to have a holistic discussion with our partners, because, yes they are struggling and their costs are increasing, and we try to help them to look at the opportunities of growth.”
Rietveld said Too Good To Go had seen an increasing number of businesses reach out for help to support their business in recent weeks.
“We have an enormous food waste problem in the world, and a lot of businesses have never really seen an opportunity to solve that problem in their their standard way of running their business.
“Most entrepreneurs have always thought, this is just the cost that I have to accept and I put it into my cost price, but what we're increasingly seeing is that business owners are starting to see a new way of running a business when it comes to food, and that inspiration is something we like to really lean in on.”
Too Good to Go is used by 25% of consumers in Denmark, and also operates in countries across Europe, US, Canada, Australia and Japan.
Over the next year, Rietveld said Too Good to Go would focus on increasing the number of businesses it had on its platform.
Further expansion of the platform in New Zealand after this would include introducing “new solutions” to the market, such as its software that allowed supermarket and grocery store owners to help identify products that were close to going out of date to make sure they did not end up in the bin.
The company hopes to have doubled the number of New Zealand businesses currently on its app to 700 by the end of the year.