Too Good To Go in Chicago: Save Money on Surplus Food
Too Good To Go helps Chicago food businesses turn unsold food into recovered revenue. It is a marketplace that lets grocers, restaurants, bakeries, and cafés sell their daily surplus to nearby customers at the end of service, instead of writing it off as waste. A business lists whatever it has left as a Surprise Bag, sets a pickup window, and earns on leftovers that would otherwise be a total loss.
For operators across Chicago, the platform solves a familiar problem. Every unsold item is money already spent on ingredients and labor, and most of it gets discarded at closing. Too Good To Go gives that surplus a second route to market, one that recovers part of the cost and brings new people into the store.
How Too Good To Go Works in Chicago
Getting set up takes about 30 minutes, and it runs alongside your existing operation without a separate system to manage:
- Create your store profile in the MyStore dashboard and set the pickup windows that fit your day.
- At the end of service, pack whatever has not sold into Surprise Bags.
- List the bags in the app, where nearby users can reserve and pay for them.
- Customers collect during your pickup window, and you keep the majority of each sale.
Because bags are made up of surplus, there is nothing extra to prep and no demand to forecast. You list what you have, when you have it.
What Types of Chicago Businesses Use Too Good To Go?
Too Good To Go works for almost any business that ends the day with unsold food. Across Chicago, partners include:
- Grocery stores and neighborhood markets
- Bakeries and pastry shops
- Cafés and coffee shops
- Delis and prepared food counters
- Restaurants and quick-service chains
- Convenience stores
Grocery tends to see the strongest results, since stores carry high volumes of short-dated stock and sell through Surprise Bags reliably, but the model adapts to the surplus patterns of each business.
How Too Good To Go Helps Chicago Businesses Reduce Food Waste
Food waste is one of the highest hidden costs in the restaurant and grocery business. When a café bakes more than it sells or a grocer over-orders produce, that surplus is usually discarded at the close of the day. It represents money already spent on ingredients and staff time, and across a city the size of Chicago, it adds up to an enormous amount of good food lost daily.
Too Good To Go was built to address exactly this. Instead of discarding unsold food, a business lists it as a Surprise Bag and sells it to someone nearby at a reduced price. The store recovers part of the cost and the food gets used, which turns a standing daily loss into a recovered sale.
This surplus-to-sale model keeps food out of landfills while giving operators a practical reason to act on waste beyond goodwill alone.
Chicago partners have recovered more than 6.6 million dollars in revenue this way while keeping over 1.5 million meals worth of food in circulation.
Why Chicago Businesses Partner with Too Good To Go
The starting point for most operators is recovered revenue. Every Surprise Bag returns money on food that would otherwise be a write-off, and partners keep the majority of each sale after a small per-bag fee. Even a few bags a day can add up to thousands of dollars across a year, all from stock a business had already bought.
The platform also brings new people through the door. Roughly 15 to 20% of the customers who collect a bag are visiting that store for the first time, and around 41% buy something else while they are there. A discounted bag often becomes a full-price sale and a returning customer.
Setup is quick and low-effort. A business can be live in about 30 minutes through the MyStore dashboard, setting its own pickup windows around the daily routine, with no separate storefront to build.
Partners gain visibility as well. Every time someone in Chicago opens the app to find food nearby, participating storefronts appear in front of a high-intent local audience. Chicago-based partners regularly see over 1,000 views a month, representing additional marketing value and free advertising all from food previously going to waste.
For grocery stores, the platform is a direct way to cut shrink, moving perishable and short-dated stock before it has to be pulled from shelves rather than absorbing the loss. Businesses tracking sustainability goals get measurable results too, since every bag sold offsets an average of 2.7 kg of CO2e emissions, a figure verified by an independent third party. Many operators also find that reducing daily waste lifts staff morale, since employees would rather see good food reach a customer than go to waste.
Get Your Chicago Business on Too Good To Go
Ready to turn your surplus into revenue? Chicago grocers, restaurants, bakeries, and cafés can sign up and start listing Surprise Bags in about 30 minutes. Get started with Too Good To Go for food businesses, or learn more about the platform for grocery stores.