To Cut Food Waste, Supermarkets Turn to AI to Sell Near-Expired Goods
Too Good To Go, an app that offers consumers cheap “surprise bags” of unsold food, is launching a new tool to help supermarkets discount expiring items.
A customer shops inside a Spar Group Ltd. supermarket.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/BloombergSupermarkets are missing out on untapped revenue from selling food that’s about to expire, as store workers waste hours searching for short-dated products and discounting them by hand.
At least that’s the pitch from Too Good To Go, an eight-year-old Danish company that cut its teeth addressing restaurant food waste and is now turning to grocery stores’ soon-to-expire goods. Starting this month, TGTG is selling an artificial-intelligence-powered solution that assists supermarkets with expiration dates, which are a major pain point for retail food waste. The company will begin its global rollout with the international supermarket chain SPAR.