Goodie Bag curbs food waste, feeds thousands affordably

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – A marketplace for surplus food. ‘Goodie Bag’ connects shops with good, unsold food at a discounted price for people to pick up and enjoy.

The app is a fun way for people to try new shops in the area, support local businesses, and help keep food from going to waste.

Eddy Conners, Goodie Bag’s co-founder and CEO, said, “We noticed the opportunity to make the food system more sustainable and accessible to people so that they can have more affordable options on good food.”

The app is aimed at securing the best deals from local shops, while making sure good food never goes to waste.

“We love working with locally owned restaurants, bakeries, cafes, grocers, any shop that otherwise has good food that sometimes they can’t sell, that our platform can connect to a lucky individual,” explained Eddy.

He hopes the app also helps local shops connect with more people in their community.

Charleston, a city filled with great local food spots, is owned by many small business owners like Pram Sembiring, who is the owner of Maccaro Charleston.

“To me, is quite fun to see that when people enjoy, not because of a discount, but they find something new and then for us as a small business is really, really encourage to do more because sometimes we just put like ten, in half an hour is gone,” shared Sembiring.

Through the app, you can favorite your go-to shops, track your orders, choose dietary preferences, and it even has a flash sale feature.

“Partners can join at no cost. We think the benefits of Goodie Bag are honestly so great. We don’t want to put up a paywall to prohibit anybody from joining Goodie Bag. We’re really on a mission to eliminate food waste across the U.S., so we don’t want anything getting in the way of that,” said Jack Connors, who is the head of partnerships for Goodie Bag.

With over 200 partnering shops, the company says they have been able to prevent over 45,000 goodie bags from being wasted, while feeding over 11,000 people.

“I think if you work in the food scene at all, you understand what the hustle is, and then since these are business owners, you know, you really understand that it’s like their mission, their equity is built into their shop. So, you’re not only supporting a small business, but you’re supporting a local family, too,” explained Jack.

After downloading the app, make sure your notifications are turned on, so when a participating shop lists a goodie bag, a notification will go out, and whoever buys it first, claims it, and can pick it up from that store with the pickup window they choose.