Too Good To Go turns surplus soap, pet care, and plants into its next bargain hunt

After building its name on discounted surplus food, Too Good To Go is adding five non-food areas to the bargain-hunting app, including personal care, pet products, flowers and greenery, supplements and nutrition, and household items.

Here's what to know

Per RetailDetail, the Too Good to Go marketplace, which has centered on food waste, will now let retailers move usable non-food overstock that does not sell easily through standard channels, starting out in areas such as laundry products, cleaning supplies, and home accessories.

Too Good To Go said these goods can become surplus for reasons other than expiration. Packaging redesigns can leave older versions behind, seasonal goods can lose relevance, product ranges can change, and demand can shift.

CEO Mette Lykke said the company wants to highlight the usefulness of products that might otherwise be overlooked.

"Too Good To Go is built on making the invisible visible," she noted. "Value exists all around us. Whether it is a meal, moisturizer, plant or pet product, our role is to help it find someone who can use it. Some products are simply too good to go." 

More background

According to the company, the app in France already includes brands such as Head & Shoulders, Always, Oral-B, Dove, Neutrogena, and Nivea. Other partners include Auchan and Inglot in Poland, Decathlon in Italy, Interflora in Denmark and Sweden, and OBI across Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.

The platform has roughly 150 million registered accounts and 200,000 active partners.

For shoppers, the expanded range could mean more lower-priced essentials, while retailers get another way to reduce waste and recover value from items that might otherwise remain unsold.

What's being done?

Too Good To Go's new rollout is visible in several European markets, but the mix varies by country and by store. One shopper might see beauty and personal care products, while another finds flowers, plants, sporting goods, or home items.

That market-by-market setup could let Too Good To Go expand without waiting to build a single standard catalog. It also gives brands and retailers a way to monetize products that remain functional, useful, and attractive to budget-conscious customers.

Lykke said, "Too Good To Go started with food because we saw how absurd it was that something so valuable could become waste. Ten years later, it is clear that the same principle applies beyond food. Our vision is a world with no waste, and expanding the Marketplace lets us act on that vision across more of the products people use every day."

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