As of January 2026, Vicky Bakery’s Bird Road store, in the Miami area, was selling food it would otherwise throw out at closing as discounted surprise bags on the Too Good To Go app. The chain’s CEO told NBC Miami the store had brought in about $6,500 that way, but the app takes a cut of every sale, so run the fee math before you copy it.
What happened
Vicky Bakery is a Cuban bakery chain that has been in Miami since 1972 and now has stores around Florida, according to its website. In January 2026, NBC Miami reported that the chain’s Bird Road store had been selling end-of-day leftovers through Too Good To Go since the previous August, which would be August 2025.
Too Good To Go is an app for selling unsold food at a discount. A shop fills a mystery bag with whatever is left that day, and shoppers book one in the app and collect it near closing, Modern Retail reported in July 2024.
How the store did it, step by step
- It named the waste. CEO George Barriere told NBC Miami that whatever croquetas, pastelitos and empanadas are left at closing get thrown out every night. That is the food the app gives a second chance to sell.
- It joined Too Good To Go. The business signs up as a partner and lists its bags in the app.
- It priced the bags far below shelf price. In January, a bag cost $5.99 and held $18.99 worth of food, NBC Miami reported. For scale, one empanada sold for $3.50. NBC said app customers pay a third or less of the regular price.
- Customers book, then collect at closing. Buyers claim a bag in the app and come by near closing time, so the store hands over food it has already made instead of tossing it.
What it brought in (self-reported)
The CEO told NBC Miami that, as of January, the Bird Road store alone had brought in about $6,500 through the app, from food that would otherwise have been a total loss.
Read that number with care:
- It is the CEO’s own figure. No one outside the company has checked it.
- The fees are unclear. The story does not say whether $6,500 is before or after the app’s cut.
- Other numbers don’t line up. NBC also reported that the restaurant saved 18,000 meals, and the CEO said it avoided about 4.85 metric tons of carbon dioxide. At $5.99 a bag, $6,500 works out to roughly 1,085 bags (our math), far fewer than 18,000. The story does not say whether “the restaurant” means this one store or the whole chain, so we lead with the dollar figure.
The fee math to run first
The app is not free. In July 2024, Modern Retail reported that Too Good To Go kept $1.79 from every meal sold through the app and also charged each business $89 a year, deducted from what it earned there. Those are 2024 terms, not Vicky Bakery’s deal, and they may have changed. Use them to practice the math, then get current terms from the company.
Here is the math with Vicky Bakery’s prices, assuming each bag counts as one meal sold. All of it is our math, not the sources’:
- Per bag: a $5.99 bag minus $1.79 in commission leaves the store $4.20.
- The yearly fee: $89 divided by $4.20 is a little over 21, so it takes about 22 bags a year just to cover it.
- At Vicky Bakery’s scale: if $6,500 is before fees, roughly 1,085 bags at $1.79 each comes to about $1,940 in commission. That is roughly 30% of the total, before the $89 fee.
Then ask the questions the app’s numbers can’t answer:
- Is the waste steady? A bag program works best when you have leftovers most nights. Ask how you handle a night when you sell out.
- Will regulars trade down? If a customer who used to pay full price in your last hour starts waiting for a $5.99 bag, you lose money. Watch your last-hour sales.
- Is $4.20 a bag worth the staff time? Someone has to pack the bags and hand them over. Count those minutes.
- Would baking less beat selling leftovers? The cheapest leftover is the one you never made. Use your waste log to trim what you make, then bag what is left.
What it means for a local business
If you sell food that can’t go back on the shelf tomorrow, such as baked goods, prepared meals or deli items, you have already paid to make it. Selling it at a deep discount turns part of that cost back into cash, and it may bring in people who have never tried your shop.
It won’t fit every business. If your leftovers are small or hard to predict, the yearly fee and the staff time can eat most of the gain. The money you keep on each bag is small, so the case rests on steady volume and on food you would have thrown out anyway.
Before you count the money as profit, talk to your accountant about how to record these sales.
What to do this week
- Starting tonight, for five closing nights, write down what you throw out and what it would sell for.
- If the waste is steady, contact Too Good To Go and get its current commission, yearly fee and payout terms in writing.
- Run the per-bag math with your own numbers: bag price minus commission, then how many bags it takes to cover the yearly fee.
- If the math works, price a test bag at about a third of shelf value, as Vicky Bakery did.
- After 30 days, compare the money you kept after fees with what you used to throw away, and check whether full-price sales in your last hour dropped.