Reducing food waste is really important, and we all know that big businesses often produce the most waste. As a result of this, it’s always heartening to see companies on Too Good To Go trying to reduce their environmental impact.
But when I saw TikToker Nick Ball’s video showing the lame contents of his Morrisons Cafe Ingredients bag, I just knew I had to see whether they’d upped their game since he called them out, or whether things hadn’t changed.
In his bag, he received a cottage pie ready meal, a large bag of frozen cauliflower gratin, mashed potato, three packs of nacho cheese, and a brownie – and he was fuming about it.
“They said this was a £30 bag, but this is not £30; I’m taking it back to see what they say,” Nick fumed as he returned to the shop, claiming he’d been given the wrong bag. But a staff member reiterated it was the correct bag, and Nick labelled the incident as “f**king appalling”.
Little did I know that mine was going to be much, much worse. Nick said, after his TikTok gained popularity, that: “Sometimes you don’t get what you want, but should always be to the value of the bag,” so when I turned up, I expected £30 worth of food, hoping they’d learned their lesson after this incident.
I paid £10 for the bag, and there was a £1.11 fee for the store to package it up for me, which I thought was a little weird given I could easily take my own bag if I’d have known. Even so, the main aim of Too Good To Go is to reduce food waste, so at this point I couldn’t complain too much.
But that didn’t last long. When I got home and opened my bag from Morrisons Cafe at Eccles Irwell Place I was left absolutely gobsmacked. Insulted, even. My jaw dropped when I opened it.
What was in my Too Good To Go bag ‘worth £30?’
- 2.5kg of mixed carrots and parsnips
- 2.5kg cauliflower gratin
- 4 sachets of nacho cheese
Yep, that’s it. In the comments of Nick’s video, someone said: “Your big mistake was walking away. You should have got the guy to individually price each item for you to see if it added up to the £30”.
As per Morrisons’ website, a kilogram of ‘wonky’ carrots would set you back 53p. A kilogram of ‘wonky’ parsnips cost 55p. That would make the 2.5kg of mixed carrots and parsnips worth £1.62 altogether.
Cauliflower gratin isn’t actually available in-store as it appears to be a cafe-only item, perhaps for a roast dinner, so it’s tricky to work out how much of a cost it came at to Morrisons. I’d be generous and say this bag would be worth about £5, so up to now, the contents of the bag are worth roughly £6.62.
Finally, I received four sachets of frozen nacho cheese sauce. Of course, nacho cheese is sold by the supermarket, but there’s no way that each sachet was worth £1.40 like the 280g of nacho cheese sauce online. I’d say the four sachets were probably worth a couple of quid, and that’s being generous.
My thoughts after opening the bag…
After opening the bag, I truly felt deflated. Obviously, I was doing this for a bit of fun – an experiment, if you will, to see whether the Morrisons Cafe bags really were as bad as some had made them out to be on TikTok.
But it’s no joke if you spend your hard-earned cash on something that’s supposed to be worth £30 only to find that it’s not even worth the tenner you spent on it.
Yes, I understand that the whole point of Too Good To Go is to save food waste, and I can’t go in the back and hand-pick exactly what I want—I’m not an idiot. However, the fact of the matter is that Nick’s experience with Too Good To Go obviously wasn’t isolated because it happened to me, too.
Some slated Nick for saying it wasn’t “a rip off” for £10, but the bag is advertised online as being worth £30, and Too Good To Go admitted this bag “fell short”.
If you’re claiming something is worth £30, then it has to be worth £30. More effort and care should also be put into ensuring there’s variety in the bags to keep customers happy.
Of course, some people do have good experiences. I saw one post on the TooGoodToGo Facebook group from January, where a woman was “so pleased to get a frozen Morrisons Cafe ingredient bag”. She received one 2.5kg bag of cauliflower cheese, one bag of frozen chicken breasts, 15 nacho cheese sachets and 25 sweet large waffles – clearly a lot more than I was given.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had positive experiences with Too Good To Go in the past, but after hearing stories of people getting lousy bags, and experiencing it myself, it does make me question things.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson from Too Good To Go said: “We are committed to ensuring a positive experience for everyone who saves food with us. While food surplus is naturally unpredictable, we work closely with all of our partners to uphold quality and value standards.
“If users feel these haven’t been met, we encourage them to contact Customer Care via the app so we can investigate and resolve the issue. We’re sorry this Surprise Bag fell short and will be reminding the store of our minimum value requirements.
“While disappointing, cases like this represent a very small percentage of the thousands of bags we save every day as part of our mission to inspire and empower everyone to fight food waste together.”
I also contacted Morrisons regarding this incident, who didn’t share the individual prices of the items, and said that Too Good To Go was responding on their behalf and their beliefs aligned.
Anyway, it looks like I’ll be making the world’s biggest carrot and parsnip soup and feeding my neighbours for about a month from it…