15 November 2022 - Too Good To Go, the world’s largest B2C marketplace for surplus food, announces today the acquisition of CodaBene, a French retail tech startup which developed FoodMemo: a software for the digital management of expiry dates in order to reduce unsold food in stores, while optimising retailers' margins. This acquisition reflects Too Good To Go's ambition to extend its expertise and in-store food surplus solutions beyond its marketplace.

With the integration of CodaBene, Too Good To Go extends its food waste reduction offering in order to best support retailers in-store.

Between 1% and 3% of retailers’ annual sales are lost through food waste, and a large part of this is attributable to the lack of transparency of expiry dates on in-store inventory. Better managing products with short expiry dates is therefore a priority for many retailers.

Supporting stores in managing unsold or surplus food is a priority for Too Good To Go in its mission to reduce food waste. With this new solution, Too Good To Go will offer more comprehensive support for managing products that are approaching their expiry dates in store.

To do this, Too Good To Go has decided to acquire CodaBene, a French retail tech startup and leader in the digital management of in-store expiry dates. Its goal is to reduce in-store food surplus while maximising the retailer´s margins.

In many stores, expiry dates on food are not yet digitised, meaning staff must check each product daily and remove them one by one from the shelf before they expire. Some products are inevitably missed with this manual check, causing significant amounts of food waste. This is the challenge that CodaBene is tackling with its FoodMemo platform, which is based on two steps:

1. Identifying products that are approaching their expiration date.
2. Recommending to the store employee, via algorithms, the most relevant and profitable action to optimise the end of life of the identified short-dated products. 

• Discount the near-expiry products with a discount sticker
• Donate the item to food associations and charities
• Resell products through a Too Good To Go Magic Bag

More than a surplus management solution, FoodMemo is an operational excellence tool that combines economic and sustainable benefits. The platform facilitates quick decision-making so that products are not discarded sooner than necessary, and maximises distributors' margins by valuing millions of products every month.

In total, 3 million products are saved each month across more than 1,000 stores by using CodaBene´s services. The integration of FoodMemo into Too Good To Go´s offering, alongside its marketplace, is therefore a significant step forward in reducing food waste. Responding to the emerging demands of retail partners, this acquisition will allow retailers to redistribute nearly all wastage in stores, by identifying products and proposing the most suitable solutions for each store and product category. The platform will be gradually available to all partners and future partners of Too Good To Go.

France is one of the first countries in which the solution will be launched. FoodMemo's platform will be available for partners to use alongside Too Good To Go's marketplace, as part of an integrated portfolio of food surplus management initiatives from end-to-end. FoodMemo's platform will be gradually offered to partners across all 17 countries where Too Good To Go currently operates.

Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go, says “We are delighted to integrate CodaBene and the FoodMemo platform into our offer to effectively combat in-store food waste. With this acquisition, we are going further to support and advise our partner distributors more holistically in the management and optimisation of their surplus and unsold food. We are thus responding to the challenges expressed by our customers to effectively reduce in-store food waste while improving stores' profitability.”

For Laurent Bacot, co-founder and CEO of CodaBene “Joining Too Good To Go means joining an impact business to reduce food waste in the world. This merger allows us to extend our offer to new and existing customers by offering them even simpler, more efficient and more profitable solutions for managing food surplus. Distributors will thus have a new range of levers to minimise waste and maximise their margins.”

Jérémy Denais, co-founder and CTO of CodaBene, adds “Joining Too Good To Go is in line with the natural logic of our desire to put technology at the service of the fight against food waste. The complementarity of our digital store solution and the Too Good To Go consumer application guarantees technical continuity in the food surplus management chain to have a greater impact.”

Both Too Good to Go and CodaBene share the ambition of developing a food system that is ultimately more sustainable and efficient, for retailers and consumers.