August 10, 2022
As grocery inflation continues to threaten household budgets, cash-strapped customers are looking for new ways to cut grocery costs. Families are turning to apps that can help them avoid paying full price by helping them quickly find foods that are about to expire.
report from next city describes the emerging trend of families reaching for grocery apps like Flashfood, Too Good to Go, Food For All, Karma and Olio. These apps allow users to purchase throwaway groceries from nearby restaurants and grocery stores.
Flashfood CEO Josh Domingues acknowledged that the app, which boasts more than 700,000 active users, has seen huge growth due to inflation. From 2022 onwards, the expanded user base also points to new habits. Users are traveling longer distances to purchase discounted groceries at grocery stores. They also visit multiple locations per day for discounted grocery store prices.
Working with restaurants and cafes, Too Good To Go has driven 1.3 million expiring meal purchases in the past seven months. This is the same number of meals sold through the app in the last two years.
Grocers began seeking partnerships with food waste apps for their environmental mission even before inflation forced consumers to reconsider their grocery bills.
Meyer reported in May that its partnership with Flashfood has diverted more than a million pounds of food that would otherwise be wasted. The grocer will begin expanding his Flashfood usage across its footprint in 2021 after a successful pilot program in 2019. The pilot showed his test store food waste was reduced by 10%.
But with inflation raging, there is no doubt that consumers are looking for discounts as much as ways to reduce food waste. Hard-discount grocers like Aldi and Lidl are gaining momentum in the US, according to an April survey. bloomberg The expected article could pose a threat to incumbents such as Walmart and Target as inflation has forced customers to cut costs further.
Discussion question: How do you see the growing popularity of food waste apps impacting the grocery and foodservice industries? All grocery stores partner with food waste apps Should I, or is there a downside to making discount groceries easier to find?
“We’ve all been through sticker shock at the grocery store, so these apps can make a big difference.”
