This app is my secret to $6 takeout and cheap groceries

There’s no sugarcoating it. Dining out, swinging by a local bakery or ordering a specialty coffee feels like a luxury these days as food prices rise nationwide.

But I still want to indulge. That’s what led me to try Too Good To Go, an app that lets people buy bags of food that would otherwise be thrown away by restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores. The best part: Most bags cost less than $6.

The app started operating in Baltimore in late 2021, but has seen a spike in interest in recent months. Between April 2025 and April 2026, the number of orders through Too Good To Go in Baltimore increased by 49%, said Molly Sposato, a spokesperson for the company. The app has more than 17 million users nationwide, according to a news release.

The company also saw an increase after launching a collaboration with Whole Foods Market last November to offer surprise bags with surplus produce and prepared foods from the grocery store, Sposato said.

Households around the U.S. have had to adapt as the war in Iran, supply chain issues and tariffs continue to drive prices up. Americans are dining out less often this year, according to NPR, and home cooking is in. Affordability, including food prices, is a key issue in elections this year.

Too Good To Go works like other food delivery apps, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Except when you buy a bag, you don’t know exactly what you are getting. Restaurants and stores offer bags — most between $5 and $6, but some up to $10 — that include a selection of menu items or a handful of products. The app also shows how much that food would normally cost, often ranging from $15 to $30.

On a recent afternoon at Good Boy Bagels, a bakery in Canton, a handful of people streamed in to pick up their surprise bags. One of them was Mike Hall, who has used the app for three years to save money on food for himself, his wife and his 15-year-old.

He has gotten Too Good To Go bags from Whole Foods with food items that would normally cost triple the price, he said.

Another customer at Good Boy Bagels, Katie Alatis, picked up her first-ever bag. She was happy with the variety of bagels for $5.99. She said she hopes more restaurants in Canton join the app.

“I’ll be keeping a lookout on my app to see,” she said.

Lauren Kistner, a co-owner of Good Boy Bagels, said the store usually runs out of surprise bags, which have eight to nine bagels. Baristas will sometimes include a pastry or some cookies. Some of the people picking up orders are young families; others are recent college graduates starting out on their own.

“I hope that it is helping people. Everybody is feeling the grocery prices — literally everything going up,” she added.

My experience

Whenever my friends and I have a bad day, we tell each other, “Go get yourself a treat.”

For me, it’s usually a pastry from a local coffee shop or some deli meats and cheese. I recently cut a lot of that out because of the cost.

Getting a Too Good To Go bag can be competitive. I found myself refreshing the app minutes before the surprise bags dropped, like trying to buy tickets for a hot concert through Ticketmaster.

(I’ve been more successful with BTS, Sabrina Carpenter and All Things Go.)

I’ve gotten bags from Ovenbird, Good Boy Bagels, Sakoon Indian Fusion, Ambassador Dining Room and Whole Foods. I haven’t been disappointed once, though I’m a fairly adventurous eater and have no allergies.

Ovenbird’s bag cost $4.99. I was able to pick a loaf of bread and got three pastries. That bag and the one at Good Boy Bagels felt the most cost-effective since baked goods are easy to freeze.

The Ambassador Dining Room and Sakoon Indian both offered a medley of menu items, including tandoori chicken, chickpea curry and rice. I got one meal plus some leftovers out of each bag, which cost about $6 and $5, respectively.

I was most intrigued by Whole Foods because it offers bags of produce, baked goods, seafood, specialty foods, meat and flowers. I got two specialty-food bags for $9.99 each and one meat bag for $9.99 at the Mount Washington and Towson locations.

The meat bag was a score with about five pounds of organic chicken thighs, which will last me a while.

The app isn’t perfect. I was once overwhelmed with brie when ordering from Whole Foods. The pickup times also aren’t the most convenient for everyone, as they tend to be near when businesses close, either midafternoon or as late as 9 p.m.

But according to the app, I saved $112 over the past year on groceries and takeout. In times like this, that’s no reason to complain.