Whole Foods adds grocery categories to Too Good to Go

Since Whole Foods Market and surplus food marketplace Too Good to Go (TGTG) partnered last year, the two companies claim to have kept 1.6 million meals from going to waste, while also saving consumers money as grocery prices climb.

Now, they’re expanding the partnership with seven additional surprise bag categories across 530 stores, and reaching nearly every major grocery department. It’s TGTG’s first national grocery partnership to do so. They’ve added dry grocery, frozen foods, refrigerated foods, and produce bags ($6.99 for $21 value), floral bags ($7.99 for $24 value), and seafood and meat bags ($9.99 for $30 value).

While TGTG, which launched in the US in 2020 and currently has 17 million users nationwide, is focused on sustainability and food waste reduction, consumers have used the app to score cheaper food to offset rising grocery costs. Whole Foods, meanwhile, has been working to turn around its “whole paycheck” reputation as consumers become more budget conscious.

“It’s a win for consumers,” Liz Wilson, head of key accounts at TGTG, told Retail Brew. “There’s the affordability aspect. They’ve also always been leaders in sustainability. So marrying those two things together with their work with us at Too Good to Go just made sense.”

Taken by surprise: TGTG debuted its largest-ever grocery partnership with Whole Foods in July 2024 after a pilot in a handful of stores, launching with two surprise bags categories in bakery and prepared foods across 450 locations. The effort quickly went viral as shoppers took to TikTok to post their hauls; one, garnering 2.4 million views, entered the top four most-viewed TikToks tagging #toogoodtogo, according to the company.

As with the initial launch, Wilson said TGTG and Whole Foods tested the expansion earlier this year, and TikTok hauls have been popping up over the past few weeks ahead of the official expansion announcement. Highlights include a 2-liter bottle of Graza cooking oil ($29.99) among several other items in a $6.99 bag, while another consumer (with a video amassing over 243K views) estimated her dry grocery bag’s value at ~$120. One customer who unpacked produce and meat bags on TikTok noted the TGTG app is “an amazing way to get groceries on the cheap with no coupons needed.”

While bakery and prepared foods bags typically offer food left over at the end of the day or close to expiration, additional bags like dry grocery appears to allow Whole Foods to offload excess inventory like seasonal fall items as they turn over to the holiday season, or products with dented or ripped packaging that can’t be stocked on shelf. One dry grocery bag haul posted on TikTok on November 3 appeared to be extra Halloween candy and seasonal pumpkin-spice flavored items, while another showed a dented box of Annie’s Bunny Grahams and a jar of pasta sauce with a torn label.

Whole bag of tricks: The partnership’s extension into grocery aligns with Whole Foods’s recent efforts to emphasize affordability.

“By expanding the program to multiple departments, we’re giving our customers more opportunities to access high-quality food at a significant savings while helping us make meaningful progress toward our goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030,” Whole Foods VP of Sustainability Caitlin Leibert said in an emailed statement.

Speaking at Groceryshop in September, Whole Foods’s Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer Sonya Gafsi Oblisk said consumers becoming more “value-oriented” has been “the impactful trend” the grocer has seen in the last few years. Therefore, the retailer has lowered prices on 25% of its items in the last year, including 1,000 private label products. In stores, it’s been pushing to create a “sea of yellow,” she said.

“When customers walk into the store, then they see a lot of sale signs, and they know they can shop on a budget, and the opening price point is so important that we have a competitive price point that can match a conventional brochure in every category where we sell goods,” Oblisk said.

And for Too Good to Go, the success with Whole Foods now serves as a “proof point” for the value of its grocery partnerships, Wilson said. Beyond saving food and boosting revenue, she said, its partners have reported improved employee morale and increased foot traffic. Since the Whole Foods partnership launched, Too Good to Go has debuted partnerships with other grocers like H-E-B, Shoprite, and Save A Lot.

“Our ambition is definitely to expand and work with as many grocery partners as possible, because there’s clearly food to be saved and also demand from consumers too,” Wilson said.