Over 2,000 Bay Area shops partner with app aimed at reducing food waste
SAN FRANCISCO – A growing number of Bay Area shops are taking steps to reduce their food waste footprint, in an effort to preserve the planet and their profits.
Nearly 2,000 shops in the area are partnered with the app Too Good to Go, which connects businesses to consumers to sell surplus food at a reduced cost, helping lower the impacts of food waste on the environment.
According to company spokesperson Sarah Soteroff, when they launched in the Bay Area in 2021, they had partnered with 75 stores.
"Food waste accounts for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. For context, flight travel only accounts for 1%," Soteroff told KPIX.
Soteroff said San Francisco has become one of their top performing markets for businesses reducing food waste, saving almost a million meals from ending up in landfills so far.
"It is one of our strongest," she said. "A million meals in just one city – it shows how much people are looking for opportunities to think differently about the waste that they are producing."
One of those businesses is the ice cream shop Humphry Slocombe. They sometimes overproduce product. Instead of throwing it out, they sell pints at a reduced cost directly to consumers through the app.
"I just like at the end of the day that we haven't wasted anything. It just doesn't feel good to know that something that could have been eaten or consumed by somebody just goes into the trash," said Kelly Jertberg, the company's wholesale manager.
Jertberg said they've been involved with the app for about a year.
"We're able to profit from something that would have otherwise been in the landfill," she said.
With a background in sustainability, Jertberg said she's proud of the work her team is doing to reduce food waste.
"It feels really great," she said. "Anything is better than nothing. Whenever you can do something as opposed to sitting there and participating in a world where we throw so much away, then you should do that."
Since "Too Good to Go" launched in the United States back in 2020, a company spokesperson said they've saved more than 6.5 million meals from landfills and helped businesses earn more than $20 million in revenue that would have been lost due to food waste.