One of the best ways to save money on food is to not eat out. But what if you’re too busy to shop around for groceries? And what if you don’t want to spend a bunch of time cooking food at home? How can you save money on food if you absolutely need the convenience of someone else cooking for you?

In this post, I’ll show you the insane hack we use to get $5 meals in NYC, one of the highest cost-of-living places on this planet.

I’m not even sponsored for this. I just love this app I’m about to show you.

This app’s called TooGoodToGo. So far this app only works for some locations (but will be different by the time you read this, so I suggest you download the app and tap the Discover tab to see if there’s anything near you). For now, it works for these locations:

• San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area
• Pacific Northwest (including Seattle / Portland)
• The eastern seaboard, stretching from Massachusetts to Maryland (i.e. would include New York, Connecticut, etc).
• Chicago, IL
• Toronto, Canada
• Austin, TX

How Does This App Save You Money On Food?

Restaurants have perishables they must throw away at the end of the day if they can’t sell it. Thus, restaurants have this dilemma:

• If they get too few perishables, they might sell out too early and not capture enough profits. Not to mention a bad customer experience.
• If they buy too much perishables, they’ll need to throw it away at the end of the day, or risk getting sued by poisoned customers.

The TooGoodToGo app lets customers pick up a “Surprise Bag” of food from restaurants when they’re about to close for the day. Instead of charging you full price, restaurants will just charge you $5 for a “Surprise Bag.” A “Surprise Bag” is just an assortment of random food that the restaurant will put together for you, and there’s no fixed menu. This is because the restaurant won’t know what extra inventory they’ll have by the end of the day.

This creates a win-win situation for customer/restaurants:

• Customer can buy food for very cheap. At $5, there are some “Surprise Bags” that you can get that’ll last you the entire day. Not to mention they’re actually very tasty. So the customer wins because they can get cheap and tasty food in a large quantity.
• Restaurants win because they can at least recapture some nonzero value for their overbought inventory. In other words: restaurants minimize their losses with this app.

How To Use This App To Save Money On Food

First, go to the app store and download the “TooGoodToGo” app to save money on food. The app looks like this:

Then, just follow the instructions and sign up (I assume you know how to sign up for, and install an app on your phone).

Afterwards, all you need to do is pick a restaurant you’d like a “surprise bag” from, and then book a timeslot to pick it up. The app will collect the money for the vendor, so you can just pay with your Apple Pay / Google Pay / credit card inside the app. Here’s what an order confirmation looks like, as an example (highly recommend this particular bakery if you live in NYC):

Next, just show up to the restaurant and pick it up by showing them your receipt. Once you’ve claimed the food, you just swipe on the app to confirmed you’ve picked up the food.

Finally, enjoy your food!

The Pros & Cons For This App

I like taking a balanced look at things, so let’s review both the good and the bad for this app.

Pros:

• At $5/pop even in NYC, it’s an extremely cheap way to get great restaurant food. As such, it’s a huge time saver and an awesome way to save money on food.
• Bad restaurants that provide bad value (i.e. stingy with their “Surprise Bags”) are self-limited by the app’s rating systems. You can see the restaurant’s overall ratings and what their highlights are. Here’s an example:

Cons:

• Because it’s always a “surprise,” some restaurants don’t have great food. But sometimes, it’s delicious.
• Your pickup window is constrained to when the restaurants are about to close. This could mean picking up food at weird times during the day.
• As your meals are always a surprise, you’re out of luck if you’re on a strict diet or want to eat something very specific.
• Likewise, if you have food allergies you should call the restaurant before you reserve your food to make sure you don’t die.
• Mostly, it’s bakeries that participate in this app. While there are other restaurants that partake in this app, their food hasn’t been as good as the bakery’s in my personal experience.
  • Huge, sugary carb loads with fatty creams isn’t healthy. As such, picking up really tasty $5 baked goods will not be healthy for you in the long-term.

So Should I Use This App Or Not?

Even though the “cons” list above is much longer than the “pros” list, none of the downsides are a deal-breaker for me. I actually kind of like the fact that it’s a surprise and I have no idea what I’ll get.

It’s kind of like a gloryhole food situation, but without the disease.

This app is great for those that’d like to save money on food, but don’t want to spend copious amounts of time cooking or doing grocery shopping.

But this app isn’t good for those who are:

• On a strict diet
• Want to eat something very specific
• Just a picky eater in general

The most tasty foods are bakery foods on this app (in my experience). Thus, it’s not super healthy in the long term.

As such, my recommendation is simply to have a balanced week. Have some days where you cook for yourself to save money on food while also being healthy. And then mix in some days during the week where you use the app to enjoy cheap, quality restaurant food knowing it won’t be nearly as healthy.

PS: If there’s any updates in the locations for this app, please ping me at hello@goodmoneygoodlife.com and I’ll update this article.