When 3:30 p.m. hits Port Chester’s The Kneaded Bread each weekday, it’s easy to spot customers picking up merchandise bought with the Too Good To Go app: they’re all staring at their smart phones.

That was the case with Chian-Run Chern of White Plains, who showed a QR code at the check-out counter to prove she had paid $6.99 for a “surprise bag” of baked goods guaranteed to have a retail value of $21 or more. It was her first visit to the 26-year-old bakery café.

Looking through the items in her brown paper bag, Chern was delighted that she had received five fresh-baked loaves and two brioche buns easily worth more than $30. There was no way she could quickly consume all that bread herself, she said, so she planned to eat some, freeze some, and share the rest with co-workers.

“It’s phenomenal for custom-ers and for us,” said The Kneaded Bread owner Jeffrey Kohn, who has been using Too Good To Go since April and limits pickups to the half hour before the bakery closes at 4 p.m. He usually sets the app to make five surprise bags available, but on slow days he may go as high as 10. It’s rare for any to go unclaimed, he said.

The app enables Kohn to gen-erate extra revenue from fresh product that would otherwise be donated to charity, made into croutons, or otherwise disposed of and to build new shopper relationships. “People love it and that creates customers for life,” he said. 

A growing number of restaurants and bakeries in the greater Rye area work with Too Good To Go, which was founded in Denmark in 2015 and launched in the U.S. four years ago. The company positions itself as providing consumers with a great way to cut down on food waste and the greenhouse gases landfilled food produce while saving money. 

“Food waste is a big problem, and we can be a solution,” Too Good To Go’s website pitches visitors. “Too Good To Go is the app that lets you rescue unsold food at your favorite spots from an untimely fate.” 

Focusing locally, more than 2,500 meals have been saved in Rye and 81,000 in Westchester County since 2021, according to Too Good To Go spokesperson Sarah Soteroff.

Other nearby sellers that have recently used Too Good To Go include Café Deux, New York Pizza Station, Oishinbo and Table 13 Pizzeria in Harrison, Boleria Brazilian Bakery in Port Chester, Piazza Pizzeria in Rye, and Cerbone’s Bakery and Dig in Rye Brook.

Piazza Pizzeria owner Eugene Pisacreta said he usually programs the app to make four surprise packages available each day for $5.99 each at his Milton Road eatery. A typical box contains three to four slices of pizza and perhaps a garlic knot or chicken roll with a retail value guaranteed to be $18 or more. “It helps us with food costs. It’s good to be able to get rid of left-over food at a discounted price,” he said.

Some regular customers who use the app seem to feel awk-ward about claiming the discount, Kohn and Pisacreta both said. “They shouldn’t,” insisted Kohn. “Too Good To Go is phenomenal” for a retailer who would never sell day-old product, he explained.

The sense of surprise at discovering what is inside a Too Good To Go bag is a big part of its appeal to many shoppers. “You roll the dice and you never know what you are going to get,” said Rob Triestman of Irvington after claiming his Kneaded Bread purchase. On this occasion he hit the value jackpot: he received a cheese bread, raisin bread, boule, brioche roll, and an over-sized oat-meal raisin cookie.

Although participation in Too Good To Go may cut into donations to food banks, several Westchester nonprofit execu-tives said they were not con-cerned about Too Good To Go. “We think it’s a great way to cut down on food waste,” said Jenine Kelly, vice president of marketing, development, and communications at Feeding Westchester, which is based in Elmsford.

“There is a growing movement to sell as much of the left-over and unsold products as possible, since the law requires food suppliers to donate what they can’t sell so no food goes to waste,” said Bill Cusano, executive director of Port Chester’s Meals on Main Street.