M&S Food stores in Northern Ireland will offer Too Good To Go Surprise Bags made up of surplus bakery products, giving customers the chance to collect quality food at a reduced price at the end of the day directly from in store bakeries.
Too Good To Go is the world’s largest app for surplus food and the partnership with M&S means customers can now find quality food at a reduced price. The Northern Ireland launch follows a trial in a select number of stores across the UK and is the latest move in M&S Food’s work to reduce food waste and ensure good food doesn’t go to waste. The Surprise Bags will include bakery treats such as pastries, cookies and bread baked in store.
Each of the Surprise Bags will include three to four bakery products to a minimum retail price of £10.20 for just £3.80. Customers can order their Surprise Bags through the Too Good To Go app and collect them Monday to Saturday, one hour before their local store closes.
Too Good To Go
Stores taking part include: M&S Abbey Centre, M&S Ballymena, M&S Banbridge, M&S Belfast, M&S Belfast Boucher Road Simply Food, M&S Belfast – Upper Road Simply Food, M&S Bangor, M&S Coleraine, M&S Craigavon, M&S Crescent Link Retail Park Simply Food, M&S Lisburn, M&S Malone Lisburn Rd, M&S Newtownbreda
The partnership sits alongside M&S’s wider Plan A programme to halve food waste by 2030 and to help edible surplus food find its way to a dinner plate. Just last week, M&S announced that over 130 million meals have been donated from surplus food being redistributed to charities through its partnership with Neighbourly.
In store, M&S repurposes surplus food like bread to make frozen garlic bread and sells bags of bananas that are extra ripe at a reduced price to prevent them from going to waste. M&S uses clear guidance to store food in the right way to prevent waste at home, and store colleagues reduce prices of unsold food before the end of the day to prevent it from going to waste. No food goes to landfill, inedible food that has passed its use by date is sent for anaerobic digestion for renewable energy.
Food waste remains a significant challenge both globally and in the UK. Globally, around 40% of all the food produced around the world is wasted, amounting to as much as 2.5 billion tonnes each year (WWF, 2021). In the UK alone it is estimated that around 10.7 million tonnes of food are wasted every year, with 6.4 million tonnes coming from households (WRAP, 2026).
For Too Good To Go, partnerships with retailers such as M&S provide a practical way to help prevent the food waste challenge, by connecting businesses with customers and giving surplus food another chance to be enjoyed.
Ryan Lemon, Regional Manager said: “It’s great to be involved in this new launch with Too Good To Go to help reduce food waste. Our in-store bakeries are incredibly popular with customers, and at the end of the day, customers will now be able to order and collect surprise bags offering fantastic surplus bakery products at great value. By finding new ways to re-purpose surplus products, we’re helping ensure more food is enjoyed rather than wasted. This partnership is another positive step towards reaching our goal of halving food waste by 2030.”
Chelsea Kerr, Managing Director at Too Good To Go UK & Ireland, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with M&S to help make their surplus food available to even more customers across the UK and Ireland. Food waste is a huge challenge, but partnerships like this show how simple it can be for businesses and consumers to take action together. By giving food that might otherwise go unsold another chance to be enjoyed, we’re making it easier for people to save good food while also getting great value. M&S is a much-loved brand across the UK, so we’re excited to be working together to make saving food from going to waste a simple and accessible part of everyday life for even more people.”
- (2020) ranked reducing food waste as the number one action you can take to help tackle climate change, by limiting the temperature rise to 2˚C by 2100 (Project Drawdown, 2020).
- For more information see: https://www.toogoodtogo.com/en-gb
