Leftover meals, low prices, less waste: Why some Santa Cruz County restaurants are turning to Too Good To Go

When was the last time you bought a tempura shrimp sushi roll with crab, a dozen freshly made donuts or a mix of burritos and pastas, enough for six meals, from a grocery store hot bar — for less than $10?

Restaurants throughout Santa Cruz County are offering food left over at the end of service for sale at rock-bottom prices with the help of national app Too Good To Go. Businesses that use it said the service helps recoup the cost of food that they would have otherwise thrown away, and keeps it out of the landfill by placing it into the hands of app users. The winning formula still has ground to cover locally, with fewer than 15 food businesses using the service throughout the county. 

The catch: Customers trade choice for savings when they purchase the aptly named “surprise bags” from bakeries, restaurants and grocery stores, the contents of which vary daily. The flexibility is worth it, they believe, in order to pay about a third of full price. There are a limited number of bags, and users have to be quick on the draw to snag their favorites, which creates a gamelike experience. 

After paying $6.99 via the app, I showed up at Oyuki Sushi Nikkei in downtown Santa Cruz at 8:30 p.m. after regular service ended. Four other groups were also waiting near the door with canvas bags in hand, waiting for takeout orders purchased through the app.

For that price, I would have been happy to walk away with some miso soup and an order of edamame, so I was surprised when owner Maynor Lopez rolled us each a sushi roll stuffed with tempura shrimp, avocado and cucumber, topped with imitation crab, crispy rice and a sweet sauce. 

Lopez usually offers rolls made to order using whatever he has left over at the end of the night in Oyuki’s surprise bags. The value of the roll is around $21 – although it doesn’t correspond to a specific menu item – and he sells between five and eight a day. These sales are a way for him to earn a little money back for fish he would otherwise have to discard. 

“After you cut the fish, you can’t use it the next day. We use a lot of different fish on every roll, so we don’t always know what we’ll make until about 8 p.m.,” said Lopez. “Instead of throwing it away, you get at least something to go toward food costs.” 

A group of developers started Too Good To Go in Copenhagen in 2016 to combat food waste at restaurants in Denmark. It launched in the U.S. in 2020 in New York City and expanded to San Francisco in 2021, but awareness has been slow to trickle south to Santa Cruz County. About a dozen bakeries, pizzerias, coffeehouses and restaurants use the app, which is free for download. Businesses pay a percentage of each fulfilled order back to the company. 

Too Good To Go partnered with Whole Foods Market in 2024 to offer surplus food, including from the stores in Capitola and Santa Cruz, and added seven new specific categories for “surprise bags” – such as produce, seafood, dairy and even floral items – in November 2025. A media release on the company’s website outlines a set price tier for the bags, which hovers around 30% of retail costs. 

Aptos resident Grace Callahan started using Too Good To Go early this year. At first, she thought the prices were a “gimmick,” but said picking up her first produce bag at Whole Foods was “mind-blowing.” “It felt like $100 worth of fruits and vegetables – apples, grapes, zucchini – a whole bunch of produce that was totally usable, for between $6 to $8,” she said.

I had a similar experience when I managed to snag a Prepared Food bag from the Whole Foods in Santa Cruz, and opened the heavy bag inside my car in the parking lot. For $10.96, I received six pre-packaged Whole Foods-branded meals: grilled chicken and Parmesan pasta; chicken fajitas; potstickers; and three chicken burritos. 

The meals were marked to be sold by that day, but the Dry Grocery Bag I picked up at the Capitola location was full of shelf-stable items that had months left before they expired. It included a box of cereal, protein bars, matzo crackers, a bottled iced coffee, a package of lavash flatbread and a 12-ounce bag of organic, whole-bean coffee — a big-ticket item with coffee prices at record-breaking highs – for $6.99. 

Callahan said she uses the app about once a week to supplement her regular groceries or meal plan for the week, and often purchases a Whole Foods grocery bag or meals at Pizza My Heart.

“It’s a nice addition to groceries, since they’re so expensive, but it hasn’t changed my shopping list because you can’t guarantee what you’re going to get,” she said. She noted that the bags don’t accommodate dietary restrictions.

Pizza My Heart’s locations on 41st Avenue in Capitola and in Santa Cruz started using the service in 2024 after they discovered the company at an industry event. Too Good To Go’s zero-waste message appealed to Pizza My Heart, said executive chef Spencer Glenn. 

The Santa Cruz-based pizzeria offers slices from around 10 different kinds of pizza throughout the evening. At the end of the night there is inevitably some waste, said Glenn. The restaurant offers three slices for the price of one, or $5.99 for an $18 value, and prepared salads that would retail for $15 for just $4.99, through Too Good To Go. 

Occasionally, Pizza My Heart will offer a whole pizza for a fraction of the original price if it’s made incorrectly or a customer had to cancel the order. “That’s an opportunity for us to get a good product in somebody’s hands for a discounted price,” Glenn said. 

In his experience, there are few downsides for participating. App users claim around 90% of the bags, and the process of fulfilling the orders was easy to integrate into regular service. It also allows restaurants to offer regular customers a complete selection of pizza slices through the end of the night. 

Before Pizza My Heart started selling extra food through the app, it donated as much as it could to food banks, but a lot ended up in the trash, Glenn said. 

“We’re not making any money off of [the app] whatsoever, but it helps us have zero waste and minimize our loss, while offering the best possible experience for our customers,” he said. 

One drawback is that not many restaurants use it in the county, which creates scarcity. Glenn would like to see it adopted at more food businesses in the area. “There’s misfires in every restaurant that would benefit from this,” he said. 

Participating also had an unexpected benefit, said Lopez at Oyuki: It exposed his tiny sushi restaurant to new faces. 

“It’s really working well for us,” he said. “Many people who came who didn’t know about us visited for the first time using the app, and they’re regular customers now.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.