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🍽️ Leftover Restaurant Food Into A $162 Million/Year Business

Mission to eliminate food waste on a global scale

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Summary

Too Good To Go is an app that turns leftover food from restaurants into a $162 million/year business, reducing food waste and offering consumers affordable surprise bags.

Highlights

  • 🍽️ Leftover Revolution: Too Good To Go helps businesses sell discounted leftover food, tackling food waste.

  • 🎉 Surprise Bags: Customers receive surprise bags filled with leftover food for $3.99 to $9.99.

  • 📈 Growth Surge: In 2023, the company sold over 102 million bags, marking a 29% increase from 2022.

  • 🌍 Global Impact: Too Good To Go operates in 33 U.S. metro areas and has 100 million users worldwide.

  • 💰 Profitability Goals: The company aims for profitability while expanding its impact on food waste reduction.

  • 🛒 Diverse Offerings: Partnerships with retailers, including Whole Foods, broaden the variety of surprise bags available.

  • 🚀 Future Challenges: Market saturation, competition, and regulatory policies may hinder future growth.

Key Insights

  • 🌱 Addressing Food Waste: Too Good To Go’s model not only saves money for consumers but also helps to mitigate the staggering $1 trillion annual cost of food waste globally.

  • 💡 Consumer Engagement: The surprise element of the bags adds excitement, encouraging repeat use and exploration of new dining options, which can lead to full-price purchases later.

  • 🌐 Market Expansion: The company’s rapid growth into new countries necessitates careful navigation of each region’s regulatory landscape, impacting operational strategies.

  • 🔄 Sustainability Focus: By diverting food from landfills, Too Good To Go contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to removing 900,000 cars from the road.

  • 📊 Revenue Model: With 96% of revenue from transaction fees, the app’s financial health hinges on user engagement and continued growth in surprise bag sales.

  • 🤝 Partnerships for Growth: Collaborations with major retailers like Whole Foods allow Too Good To Go to expand its offerings while tapping into a broader customer base.

  • 🔍 Competitive Landscape: As the food waste space grows, Too Good To Go must innovate and adapt to maintain its market leader status against emerging competitors.

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What to Read

Graduate from college, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to Wall Street, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich.

In the world of wealth-building books, MJ DeMarco’s The Millionaire Fastlane offers a bold, unconventional roadmap to financial freedom. While many wealth strategies preach slow and steady growth through traditional paths, DeMarco challenges readers to think differently—proposing a "Fastlane" approach to wealth creation that prioritizes entrepreneurship, leverage, and control.

The Three Roads to Wealth

DeMarco categorizes financial journeys into three lanes: the Sidewalk, the Slowlane, and the Fastlane.

  1. The Sidewalk is the path of living paycheck to paycheck, where immediate gratification and lack of financial planning dominate.

  2. The Slowlane represents the conventional advice of saving and investing over decades to achieve wealth, often only in retirement.

  3. The Fastlane, however, emphasizes creating scalable businesses that generate significant income quickly, allowing you to enjoy wealth while you’re still young.

The Fastlane Mindset

The cornerstone of DeMarco’s philosophy is shifting your mindset from being a consumer to a producer. Instead of trading time for money, as employees often do, the Fastlane encourages leveraging systems, assets, and scalable ideas to break free from time constraints.

Key principles include:

  • Value creation: Solve problems for many people, and wealth will follow.

  • Control: Own the process, whether it’s a product, service, or system.

  • Scale: Build something that can grow beyond your direct involvement.

  • Time: Use your time strategically to create freedom, not just income.

The Five Commandments of the Fastlane

DeMarco outlines five commandments to assess whether your business idea aligns with the Fastlane model:

  1. Need: Does it solve a real problem or fulfill a desire?

  2. Entry: How accessible is the business? High barriers often deter competition.

  3. Control: Do you have authority over pricing, decisions, and growth?

  4. Scale: Can the business grow to reach a wide audience or market?

  5. Time: Does it eventually free your time instead of consuming it indefinitely?

Critiques of Traditional Wealth Advice

DeMarco critiques the "Slowlane" model, where people rely on compound interest, stock market investments, or employer pensions to achieve wealth after decades. He argues that this approach fails to account for life’s unpredictability, inflation, and the value of time in one’s youth.

Instead, DeMarco advocates for entrepreneurship as the ultimate wealth vehicle, allowing for financial freedom and the flexibility to live a rich and fulfilling life.

Takeaways for Entrepreneurs

For newsletter readers in entrepreneurship and side hustles, The Millionaire Fastlane provides actionable insights:

  • Build businesses that align with the Fastlane commandments.

  • Avoid the trap of passive income schemes that lack scalability or control.

  • Recognize that wealth is not just money—time and freedom are equally valuable.

Final Thoughts

MJ DeMarco’s The Millionaire Fastlane is a wake-up call for anyone tired of the grind and ready to embrace bold, entrepreneurial strategies. By focusing on value creation, scalability, and control, DeMarco provides a practical guide to achieving wealth and living a life of freedom and abundance. For readers of this newsletter, it’s a must-read for anyone serious about breaking free from traditional financial constraints and creating a truly fulfilling life.

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