M&S Food partners with Too Good To Go to prevent waste of surplus bakery

Over 350 M&S Food stores are now offering Too Good To Go Surprise Bags made up of unsold bakery products.

The partnership between the retailer and the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food gives customers the chance to purchase discounted pastries, cookies, and bread directly from in-store bakeries at the end of the day.

Each Surprise Bag costs £3.80 and includes three or four bakery items – dependent on the surplus that day — totalling a minimum retail price of £10.20. They can be ordered through the Too Good To Go app and collected on Mondays to Saturdays, one hour before the stores closes.

The nationwide launch follows a trial in a select number of M&S shops across the UK, the response to which was described as “outstanding”. It sits alongside the company’s wider Plan A programme to halve food waste by 2030. 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.

An initiative first introduced back in 2020 sees unsold in-store bakery loaves each day filled with garlic butter and frozen to extend their shelf life by 40 days. M&S said it uses clear guidance to store food in the right way to prevent waste at home, while store colleagues reduce prices of unsold food before the end of the day. No food goes to landfill, it noted, adding inedible food that has passed its use by date is sent for anaerobic digestion for renewable energy.

“Too Good To Go is a brilliant example of how we’re turning our commitment to reducing food waste into practical action,” commented Lucinda Langton, head of sustainability at M&S Food. “By giving customers access to surprise bags of surplus bakery products, we can help ensure more of our food is enjoyed.”

Food waste remains a significant challenge both globally and in the UK, highlighted M&S. 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].

Food waste is accountable for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally [WWF, 2021]. Since its launch in 2016, Too Good To Go has helped to save over 600 million meals from going to waste, the equivalent to 1.6 million tonnes of CO2e avoided.