We often grab a hold of the University of Leipzig Student! newspaper, keeping an eye out for local stories that may be of interest to LeipGlo readers. This one we found to be of particular value, as it involves the possibility to eat from restaurants in town for very cheap. It ran in the July 2016 edition.
The newspaper likes to give money-saving tips, and even has interesting suggestions regarding postage. For the eat-for-cheap article, Student! talked about a particular app – “Too Good to Go.” If you’re “hungry, not in the mood to cook, and money is tight, too,” the app can be particularly helpful. It will tell you just when to saunter over to participating restaurants at different corners of Leipzig, and find sweet relief… as long as you can wait a while for dinner.
As you know, at the end of the evening, restaurants tend to have leftover food they want to get rid of. So instead of wasting it on the bin, they can give it to lucky (or in this case, app-savvy) customers.
“And just like that, you do something not only against the hole in your stomach, but also against food waste,” says the article.
Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds. Here’s how it works, according to the newspaper:
“At closing time, restaurants such as Café Tunichtgut at center west, the Asian buffet Goldene Kugel near Brühl and the kebab shop Shahia on Karli offer their leftover meals (at reduced prices). As long as the selected restaurant has something left, you can book, through the app, a ticket for two to five euros for the evening. At the indicated hour, you go to the restaurant, present your ticket and can fill a box with leftovers.”
Besides restaurants and cafés, bakeries also participate in the initiative. It seems bakeries, especially, were already doing this on an unofficial basis, but now it’s more organized – and international. The app’s website indicates it’s present in 11 countries so far.
The “Too Good to Go” app first took off in Denmark about a year ago. It gained wide, enthusiastic acceptance from eateries and eaters there, says Collectively.org. The site calls it “a genius app.”
Eating out at a buffet, a “23-year-old Dane grew outraged about all of the unsold food the restaurant would be forced to throw away at the end of the night. Within months he and his five business partners had launched the app.” Had nobody thought of apping up such an elemental concept before?
Have you downloaded and tried out the app? If so, we’d love to hear how it worked out for you! Please do eat and tell!
If you haven’t, here are the hyperlinks to the iPhone and Android versions. It’s free to download and create an account. And here’s where you can find the Student! newspaper for more budget-conscious tips and other cool Leipzig stories (in German).
– By Maximilian Georg and Ana Beatriz Ribeiro
