Last year, a friend of mine gave me a referral to sign up for an app called TooGoodToGo. The idea behind the app is that many restaurants and grocery stores have fresh food that is left to go to waste at the end of the day, so instead of throwing it out, they can instead charge customers a small fee to take a “grab bag” of food home. I thought that most grocery stores would donate to shelters and people in need, but I suppose that not every food-related business has the resources to facilitate this type of assistance. Either way, when I reviewed which businesses interested me within a short walking distance of us this time last year, I was dismayed at the small list of options. I did not want to do a grocery store (too big of a grab bag, and I could easily get a bunch of stuff I’d never want to eat, or things filled with artificial colors and flavors), and the restaurants nearby that participated were so generic. So I passed and never used my referral offer, which would have given me one free grab bag.

Well, Chris learned about this app this year, so he downloaded it and got us two “test” grab bags: one was from Morton Williams, a grocery store nearby, and the second was near Breads Bakery, which finally was participating at the location close to us. This is what we got:

Morton Williams: Florida Natural orange juice – 52 oz. container, bag of hard-boiled eggs (6), one container of vanilla yogurt, one 8 oz bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

Breads Bakery (Lincoln Center location): Lemon loaf cake, two sesame bread sticks, one mixed vegetable and sunflower seed salad

The orange juice and the lemon loaf cake made both grab bags “worth it,” but I would never get vanilla yogurt with fake sugar in it (ugh), nor would I ever buy pre-shredded cheese (to keep the shape, the shredded cheese is usually coated with some weird, artificial stabilizer that I do not want to get into here). Chris likes to drink juice, but he doesn’t care for plain orange juice. So while it may occasionally be worth it and you can get lucky, I’d stick with businesses that have a much smaller selection of things you’d like, and NOT do a grab bag from a grocery store again.