Jamie Crummie, Co-Founder @ Too Good To Go

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Jamie. Jamie, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thank you very much, pleasure to be here.

So you're the founder of Too Good To Go, a brand that I use a lot myself, and definitely in my student days it came in handy a lot. But for those that don't know, can you just describe what is Too Good To Go and why did you start it?

Yeah, it'd be my pleasure. And again, thanks very much for having me here today. From a Too Good To Go perspective, we're a social impact company that is using technology to fight food waste. And for us, we're a purpose-driven business, a mission-driven business which has, you know, this whole aspiration of wanting to dream of a planet of no food waste. So at the center of our business is our marketplace, our app that you used in your student days and hopefully is still using now, where we connect individuals with businesses who have surplus food for sale. So you can go on to the Too Good To Go app, you'll see a whole host of different food businesses and you pay a reduced price for food that would otherwise have been thrown away. Now, most recently, we've been expanding our product offering. So we've gone from like a one-product business to now we have 3 product lines. And we've now introduced what we call Too Good To Go parcels. And this is where we get surplus food from manufacturers, from food producers. And then we repackage that into surprise parcels, which are then bought by our consumers in a direct-to-consumer offering. And that is packaged and shipped to them straight to their homes. So we're then, you know, addressing food waste further down that supply chain. And then most recently, we've introduced the Too Good To Go platform, which essentially is a B2B SaaS model in which we work with retailers and other food brands by creating this modular solution to help them in their reduce to clear process. So really preventing food waste at that first instance. So lots of different things happening now in the Too Good To Go space, but really exciting for us as we have these bold aspirations of a planet with no food waste. But for me and my co-founders, the journey of Too Good To Go is an exciting one. It's pretty unique. And for myself, I've always been someone who's been motivated by social environmental impact. Now, we were talking earlier about, you know, aspirations as a student and what it is that you want to do once you've graduated or yourself, you graduate with a history degree, right? And I've always wanted to do something with a social purpose, something that creates environmental value to society. And that sort of followed me through my student days. I did law. I then did a master's in human rights law. I then worked for various different NGOs and I encountered food waste from my time I spent in Australia. And I say encountered, you know, I like consciously encountered food waste, I guess, for another way of putting it. And I say that because we've all, you know, subconsciously thrown food away at some point in our lives. You know, I know I've certainly done that myself on more than one occasion, regrettably. But it was while I was out in Australia was when I really experienced food waste firsthand. I was working at an events organisation. And we would do, you know, silver service type things. And there was huge amounts of food being produced for hundreds, sometimes thousands of people. And there was vast amounts of food waste, whether it be preparatory waste, overproduction, plate waste. And after, you know, an 8-hour shift, it was my job often to take that food away and throw it in the bin. And, you know, I get pretty hungry, you know what I mean? But really, it just, it made me challenge things, made me question things. You know, was this something that was unique to the industry I was working in? Was it unique to the country that I was living in? Or was it something that was just, you know, current within the food system or within that food sector? And so fast forward a little while. And I was back in the UK. I was working with another NGO and we did an event which was catered for by people who took food from the bin. Really like cool, really novel concept, but it got me thinking, you know, how could we rescue this food before it hit the bin in the first instance? And so I built a website. It wasn't a very good website, but it was a website nonetheless that allowed a person to rescue a meal from a business. This is when I then met my, um, my co-founders who are based on the continent. And as you sort of say, the, the rest is history.

It's interesting there that, um, entrepreneurship was really more a means to an end, to have as much social impact as possible. I feel like nowadays, as a student, it kind of— you see the glamour of, uh, the founder entrepreneurship lifestyle. But for you, like whether it was through legal means or through entrepreneurship, your career is centered in social impact. If we go back to just yourself as a younger person, where does that stem from, that desire to do something within this world?

No, and it's a really good point. Like, for myself, entrepreneurship was not something that I aspired to as a young person. I mean, in the early years, I always struggle. I mean, I probably still do struggle referring to myself as an entrepreneur. For me, it was about and still is about trying to deliver social and environmental impact. And you ask where that came from. And, you know, I think a lot of it for me is it's come from my upbringing. I'm super fortunate to come from a strong family with strong values. And those values have very much been reflected in myself. You know, I go back to, you know, that childhood. I was very fortunate, as I say, to come home and me and my family, my sisters, my parents would have, you know, conversations around the dinner table every night, much probably to the demise of my younger sister who got a bit bored. But these were always discussions around social impact, around social justice. And, you know, my parents are very much like come from this area. They've worked in social justice themselves and these types of, these, these types of areas. And so that was very much reflected in myself. And it's something which is, yeah, continued and flourished.

And sustainability as a career path, when you were, you know, studying at Queen Mary's, doing your master's, like thinking about what your next step out of education might be, how viable was a career in sustainability and having an impact there, um, versus like now? What do you see as somebody that employs people and, you know, brings people through to go— like, how, how viable is it to have a career now versus back then?

Well, what I've certainly seen over the past like 10 years, and this is something that like really excites me, and I like to think of myself as someone who is a bit of an optimist But when we think of the climate crisis itself, when we talk about sustainability careers or careers which are having an impact on the environment and on the climate, then there's been a huge amount of evolution within this, within, within this space. I mean, if we just double-click into the area of food waste, for example, when myself and my co-founders, we started Too Good To Go back in the tail end of 2015. And compare that, the level of innovation within this area to where we are now in 2024, it's, it's a stark, a stark difference. So that really gives me a huge amount of excitement that we're seeing more purpose-driven business, more businesses and innovators operating in this space. And as a result, creating a lot more areas of opportunity for young people to yeah, to, to develop into and to grow into, and most importantly, to build careers which are, which are having a positive impact.

I think there's a lot of, um, companies nowadays where it's the, the whatever you're building in whatever industry, you have to think about the, uh, sustainability like implications of, of what you're building. Whereas I think what you're, what you've set out to build is inherently trying to solve a problem within that world. So I'm curious, like, you didn't have to think about, oh, how sustainable was my business? But as someone who maybe had no experience in being a founder, what would you say your main difficulties were, or the barriers to being able to have the impact you wanted in, in building Too Good To Go?

Yeah, really good question. And for me, if we take that sort of broad claim as what does that sustainable business mean For me, it's broken down into sort of two criteria. We have sustainable business in the sense that it is an organisation, an operation that can continue to deliver what it wants to deliver. In essence, it's in charge of its own destiny. So a sustainable business is one which can be profitable, one which can stand on its own two feet type thing. but it's also sustainable in the other sense, which is through these environmental credentials. And so the environmental impact, the social impact, the climate impact. And what we've developed at Too Good To Go, and this is something that, you know, myself and my co-founders, we started from the beginning, was to develop a business model in which environmental impact directly correlated to our commercial success. And so Too Good To Go, for every meal that we save is a meal that hasn't been thrown away, right? So it's a meal that is positive for the environment, it's creating positive impact. But our business model is geared that our commercial success directly aligns to that. So it's almost like a one for one. So for every meal that we save, not only are we creating more environmental impact, but that is what fuels our growth as well. So when you ask, you know, what were some of these sustainable or environmental challenges that we had when we were first starting out with Too Good To Go, I think what we've been is in this fortunate position, but very purposeful position where the very engine of our operation is one which fuels environmental impact, but it also fuels our own growth as well.

And you mentioned your co-founders there. So you might have come in as someone who's savvy on, uh, all things legal, um, and yeah, you would have your own set of skills, but what did you identify you had to surround yourself with in your co-founders, aside from just being bought into the mission? You know, how did they help amplify the mission and make it possible?

Yeah, again, that's a, that's a great question, and something that lots of entrepreneurs always ask me is, what should I be looking out for in my co-founders? And I think, you know, you, you touch on some of those really important things there. People who align with your values and align with your, your, your vision and your ambition. But similarly, you want to have skill sets which complement with each other. And, you know, that may be someone who is more tech savvy than myself. You know, I'm not a, um, a, a super techie founder, but what I am is someone who is has a very clear vision, um, someone who is, you know, very like people orientated, um, and solution-based and solution orientated. So I think the, the piece there is around looking at how you can bring people in who align with you, who importantly you get on with as well, um, but you have a skill set which complements each other.

And I imagine you said you are— you have a lot of sort of prospective founders looking up to you asking for advice. Is there anything you think people are maybe skipping ahead too quickly of when, you know, trying to do entrepreneurship at a young age? Because your, your, uh, well, your company was born out of a genuine problem that you lived and you were so frustrated by having to, you know, throw out this food every day. Do people try and like skip ahead too much, do you think, before they even really have a problem they feel passionately enough about?

I think there's different ways in which you can view that, right? You can see people who are super ambitious and want to start learning by building businesses, by becoming entrepreneurs and trying to develop solutions. But then at the same time, I guess what you're alluding to here is, is there a generation of entrepreneurs who are motivated to create an organisation or an operation or a solution without really identifying what the issue is that they're trying to solve. And I don't think there's any like right or wrong way about it. I often tell people that when, you know, myself and my co-founders, when we were starting 2 Goods Ago, it was like an MBA in itself. We were learning everything as we were doing it. And, you know, if I, if I go back to the amount of hats that I wore, you know, I was doing sales in the morning. It was customer inquiries at lunch. In the evening, it was, you know, writing press releases or trying to develop some marketing content. At the weekend, it was a finance hat where I was, you know, paying our stores and going through these types of challenges as well, or these these topics. So I don't think there is a right or wrong way of going about it. But what I would say is the entrepreneurs that are the most successful or the ones that have solutions and build businesses that are the most successful are organisations which the founder is super passionate about. And I talk about passion quite often because for me, resilience is a, you know, it's almost like a characteristic which breeds from passion. You know, if the founder is super passionate about the cause, about their solution, when the going gets tough, you know, they're able to keep going. So I think there is this area of being passionate, but then there are all these other areas which they need to tick off. Like, is there a super, like, is there a clear product-market fit?

And when did you realize that that was for you? Um, because from the outside looking in, you might think, oh, it's when you got, you know, that one big story and then, and it blew it all up, or, you know, that there will be reasons that I won't even know in your journey. But from like the beginning, when did it really feel like, okay, yes, I'm passionate about this, yes, I've got a great team, but this is something that we can build into, you know, what has become today?

I mean, from the beginning always had this view that this is something which can work and something that will work. And there was this, I guess, element of serendipity about it all. You know, had we tried to start Too Good To Go 10 years earlier, you know, we probably, well, we may have been as successful, but we may not have been as successful because the technology wasn't there. And so the adoption of mobile apps and the ease of that technology has meant that Toukutogo can scale. Whereas 10 years prior, you know, if I think back to when I was starting university, you know, I didn't even have a smartphone. The phone I had was a colour phone. That was probably more a reflection of me than the technology at the time. But what I mean is, you know, they weren't widely adopted. It wasn't until the latter years that I was in university that, you know, WhatsApp became a household application. And so would Too Good To Go or could Too Good To Go have been as successful from a marketplace point of view if the technology wasn't there? We look now at things like the Too Good To Go platform and you know, how, you know, this has innovated massively. Would we have been able to have created something like this, um, 10 years, 10 years prior? So as I say, there was this like serendipity moment in which the, um, the stars aligned almost that it was the right time. So not only from a tech point of view, but from like a public discourse perspective as well. So in 2015 was when the Sustainable Development Goals were announced and food waste was part of that. So SDG 12.3 called on a reduction of food waste of 50% by 2030. So lots of these things came together, which meant that it was the right time for ourselves. And as a result, I always had this belief that Too Good To Go can and will be a global solution for addressing food waste. I think back to some of the conversations myself and my co-founders had, and we used to often refer to this ambition that Too Good To Go would become a verb, that the act of rescuing something from going to waste would be, would be, you know, a Too Good To Go or grabbing a Too Good To Go itself in a similar way as to how, you know, you use a word like Google for searching something.

That sort of delusional optimism, or youthful naivety, that you might have had at the time.

Delusional optimism. I've never heard that one before.

Well, that's how I like to— I put a lot of what I've done in my career down to that sort of optimism that, you know, yes, it's delusional, but you need that, I think, to make, you know, to dream that big and you have that sense of belief that you had.

But, um, I'd probably call it being more of a visionary than, uh, than delusional. But yeah, we could agree that it's about looking forward Sure, but I think it's, you know, at the time no one else was doing it, right?

Like, yeah, you said this wasn't a viable thing and you kind of like rode with technology at the same time. Um, what, what do you think, um, a student, right? I think there's a lot of people where still a career in sustainability feels, um, they might really want to have that level of impact, they might want to work for a company like Too Good To Go, but I think it's really hard to actually, um showcase yourself as someone or differentiate yourself in, in that world as someone who really cares about it rather than just like thinks about it a lot. Um, is it— you got any case studies of anyone who's done anything at university and maybe gone on to join Too Good To Go that, you know, they just, they were able to stand out, um, beyond, you know, just your degree or your more classical work experience?

We're, um, a big recruiter for from universities ourselves, but we're also a recruiter, which, you know, doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have a university degree to join 2Good2Go. What we want to be is an inclusive employer, and we have various roles in which people can join at various different stages through their career. So we're now at a point where We have gone from a smaller stage startup, which was wanting to have lots of passionate generalists, to now we're at a stage where we're scaling the organization and we're having people come into roles and into careers with an element of specialism. But just because there is an element of specialism doesn't mean that you can't join TIGER2GO without having experience in an area of speciality. So, Probably less so of examples of students who have come from university with a case study and have got a career at Too Good To Go because there are, you know, there's ample people who have joined Too Good To Go straight from university or even people have joined without degrees. But there are, I think, some great examples within Too Good To Go of people who have joined in you know, a perhaps like an entry-level role and have, you know, built a career within 2 Year 2 Go and have specialized in certain areas. And we've had people who have joined in, um, to join our customer experience team and then have then taken a lateral move and upskilled into, um, data and to become data scientists. One of our First employees, Magnus, someone who has been a, say, a field sales operator and is now leading a team in our engineering department. You know, and for me, that's a fantastic case study of someone who joined TIGER2GO in our infancy before we had any, any real funding. And has been able to upskill himself and develop within the organisation to become like this super specialist role within our engineering team and leading a team within that, which, which for me is fantastic.

And I think thinking about students as a consumer, I imagine that they are a big cohort of users because of how economical Too Good To Go makes the products. What do you think What do you think is the real, uh, value of your product? I'm just interested from, from your side, um, for those that might not understand it, what is, uh, you know, both on an economical but also social, uh, side of what the business does, what is the true value that a student listens to this can, can take from your products?

The true value of the Too Good To Go product Oh, that's one I'm probably gonna have to think about a bit here. Well, one of the things we talk about at Too Good To Go is around our triple win. And I spoke earlier about the purposeful uniqueness of our business model in the sense that social impact, environmental impact directly correlates our commercial success. And when I talk about value within Too Good To Go, We talk about this triple win. So it is a win for a consumer as they're able to discover new foods, discover new flavours at price points which are more accessible to them. But it's also a win for businesses. So businesses, they're able to, you know, reduce their waste disposal costs, they're able to attract new customers through the door, and they're able to upsell other products. So when you come in and you rescue your Too Good To Go surprise bag, you might buy coffee at the same time, or you might get your groceries. You might even convert to a full paying customer because the food is that good. But it's also this win for the environment because none of this food is going to waste. So that is, for me, the unique selling point around Too Good To Go is this triple win in which everybody is a winner, the consumer, the business, and the environment.

And your own experience at university, um, you know, be that an undergrad or master's, how do you, how do you feel that your, your degree in law, even though you haven't gone to, yeah, to actually do it as a profession, has sort of, yeah, helped, helped you in, in building your business and, uh, maybe staying strong to the mission, for example?

Well, if you wanted to ask my mum, I think she'd still, uh, be a little bit upset that I never, uh, followed through on law the whole way. But look, if I reflect back at my time at university, if I think of my time through my master's, what has it taught me? Huge amounts. You know, one being solution-oriented. You know, certainly my degree really encouraged me to think outside the box and to develop arguments or compelling arguments, at least, around debating one side or the other. So I think that has certainly helped me. It's helped me to become a better communicator and to force myself to get outside of my comfort zone. So my time at university, and when I say my time at university, it wasn't just the degree, but, you know, some of the extracurricular activities, whether it be the Negotiating Society or things like this, which I would get involved in. And as someone who has had like a, you know, I've got a stutter myself, you know, being able to, you know, get involved in these types of activities, you know, forced me to become a better public speaker. It forced me to overcome some of the things that I was, you know, self-conscious about, or super mindful of. And I think all of this is, um, has laid a solid foundation for me to be able to, you know, to become an entrepreneur, to be someone who does a lot of public speaking. And, and, you know, I really thank my time at university for that.

Yeah, I think it's a— it's refreshing to hear, um, because I think there are a lot of people going to university because it feels like the right thing to do, um, rather than like maybe the tangible things that they want to get out of it. Um, I guess—

but I'd also say for me going to university, I met like a, like vast amounts of people, people from across the world, people from very different backgrounds. And, you know, that in itself is a, is a super valuable, um, a super valuable asset in itself. Not only does it help you build your network, but I think it also challenges, you know, perhaps, um, misconceptions you might have about, um, about certain people. And that was incredibly valuable for me because I was in, you know, quite a diverse, a diverse group of people from various different parts of the world, as I say. And that is both at undergrad and at postgrad as well. So it's not as— for me, education isn't just about the tangible piece of paper that says you got a first, a 2:1, or whatever it might be. But rather it's about the people that you meet, the experiences that you have. And it's about like pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. And I think you get that freedom in academia that you don't necessarily get outside of it. You know, I think of some of my own friends when I came into halls, some of them never even cooked before. I couldn't believe it. But, you know, it's something as simple as that, as these life skills, which some people haven't, you know, haven't managed to garner by that age. And, you know, for me, it was some of the best years of my life.

Yeah, I think the big lessons for me there, listening to what you're saying, is that you can't just go there expecting that it will, or yeah, or assuming that it's going to land you a job. That's what you're you can't just go, this degree equals a job, because I think you have to actually go in there with a more open mindset as to what it can bring and induce into your career, right?

And look, I might be slightly biased in my reflections of, uh, university because my university's also helped me in my entrepreneurial journey. So both my, uh, university from undergrad and from my master's gave me some grant funding to make Too Good To Go a reality. And these were institutions which really encouraged that entrepreneurial mindset, have accelerator programmes and incubator programmes to help grow and develop entrepreneurs. But could they have done a better job maybe of advertising that to the broader student population? Potentially. But again, having those opportunities, I think, were, were very, very useful.

Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, university is what you make of it, right? You have to be proactive within it. And I think maybe that's the frustration from students who arrive there, and you go from school where you've got loads of accountability, you know, your parents are there, and then suddenly you've got nothing, and it's completely up to you how you spend your time. And yeah, you know, drinking comes in, all these different things come in, and then suddenly it's like, oh, you've got to decide what you're going to do with this degree, and I think, yeah, for you, I think like you said, you attributed a lot of your values and who you are to your upbringing, right, your family. So is that just— has that always just been a mindset of you in your career, just sort of that curiosity?

Curiosity is something I always try and encourage with whoever I speak to, um, like a curiosity and wanting to learn more about Too Good To Go, for example, or curiosity and wanting to learn how something tangibly works. So I think curiosity is a fantastic characteristic which can develop and manifest while at university for sure.

Bit of a fun question before I ask my final one. What store or shop or restaurant do you order from the most from Too Good To Go?

Oh, that is a good question. What is my favourite surprise bag? Now, there are a few different ones. I think it's, it's about depending on the mood. Am I wanting to be someone who's been trying to, like, trying to be quite healthy? I must admit I've loved the parcels I've, I've rescued at the moment. So we've just launched the parcels, Too Good To Go parcels here in the UK. And I've been able to, to get some, you know, protein bars and protein shakes. So I'm someone who's trying to go on a bit of a health kick at the moment, and I'm enjoying those. But if I'm not being so, so healthy, look, I love, I love lots of the sushi places we have and some, some of the bakeries. I've got a few ones which are local to me where I live in London. And bringing them back home is always, always brilliant. I eat far, far too much anyway. So the portions are very much welcome.

Sushi is a good one because it's just not something you can really ever justify, I think. But Too Good To Go makes it a viable Dinner. My final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, is when you first started off your career journey, you know, hoping to pursue a career in law, you would have had a certain idea of what success might go on to look like. But fast forward with everything you've learned and achieved in your entrepreneurial journey, what is your definition of success in a career and how has it changed?

The definition for success for me in, in a career is happiness. And that for me, I think has to be the barometer. You have to feel that you're happy in the work that you're doing. I think it's about feeling valued as well. And ultimately for me, it boils down to creating impact. So I have, I've kind of given you 3, 3 answers there, but I think you have to take happiness and pride in what it is you're doing. You want to feel valued. Um, and I think it's also about making sure that you're you're delivering impact as well. And I'll leave that impact piece up to interpretation to the listeners.

Oh, you're definitely smashing it on that accord. Jamie, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. It's been great fun.

Cheers.