00;00;06;23 - 00;00;32;29
Speaker
Hi. Welcome to Dig In the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Every week we interview founders, marketers and researchers, from innovative brands to learn how they're approaching their role and their category in a clever way. Welcome back to this week's episode of Dig In. The podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. My name is Meagan. Today I am lucky to be joined by Sarah Soteroff.

00;00;33;10 - 00;00;57;07
Speaker
She is the senior PR manager at Too Good to Go. I'm really excited to actually dig in.... Sorry. No pun intended. I tried to avoid saying dig into because it just sounds like I'm like pushing my questioning my brand. But yes, I'm very excited to dive into what she gets up to it, to get to go sort of the concept of the company and how it's begun.

00;00;57;27 - 00;01;17;11
Speaker
And I think it's just really interesting to discuss PR when it comes to a company that's really trying to do good in the world. Like, what kind of messages are going to resonate with customers and actually convert them? Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. Megan Thank you for having me. Yeah, no worries. Let's kick it off.

00;01;17;14 - 00;01;42;25
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about what to go to. Good to go is and also a little bit about your background and your journey to get here. So to get to know is the world's largest marketplace for selling surplus food. And that sounds kind of fancy, but really what we are is we are a mechanism for businesses who produce and sell food to sell the surplus that they don't sell throughout the course of business.

00;01;43;03 - 00;02;04;05
Speaker
So if you think of a bakery or a grocery store, the amount of food that they have typically is over indexed based on what they sell. So they might have a little bit of a buffer or potentially they have their estimate they're going to have more customers than they do. And every food selling business, whether it is a gas station, convenience store or a high end restaurant, has surplus food waste.

00;02;04;14 - 00;02;26;19
Speaker
And we provide a platform for them to sell that directly to the consumer at one third, the retail cost. So the benefit is businesses can recoup some of the revenue they would otherwise lose, either by having to give that food away to employees or thrown out. And consumers can eat great food for one third the cost. And we are all helping the environment because the impacts of surplus food waste.

00;02;28;06 - 00;02;50;08
Speaker
And I think that some of that impacts as we start to talk about why and where we extended the. Yeah, I actually so when Sarah and I first connected, I was mentioning that I lived in the UK for a while and actually had heard of too good to go a little while ago like and it was definitely on my radar years ago.

00;02;51;15 - 00;03;13;13
Speaker
So it's kind of really cool to see it progressed into North America and to see how well you guys are doing. But I'm intrigued, like, how did we get here? Like what was sort of the how did you know that you should you should move into the Canadian market and the US market And why did it start in the UK?

00;03;14;19 - 00;03;32;14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're ahead of me because when I was interviewing for the role, I didn't know what it was and it wasn't available. So I've been with too good to go for almost two years, since before we launched in Canada. And when I was interviewing, we didn't even it wasn't available on the App Store. So you couldn't I couldn't even download it and figure it out.

00;03;32;14 - 00;03;53;22
Speaker
We had to kind of rely on what the model looked like in Europe. We were actually founded in Denmark in 2016, but also by a little bit of a wayward route by a couple of French people who had worked for a larger food distribution conglomerate, specifically Ensley, and they had seen the tremendous amount of food waste that happens on the production side.

00;03;53;23 - 00;04;26;25
Speaker
Things like I if we even think about it, look like the Kit Kat had the wrong If the Kit Kat word itself wasn't directly center, they would throw out that thing. So really thinking about the development of the know crazy idea okay now our founder see talks about she would go into this room and it would just be like disposed of perfectly good to eat just dispose of Kit Kats that were a little bit imperfect And she really and her co-founders really thought about, okay, if this is happening, here we are.

00;04;27;01 - 00;04;45;27
Speaker
Another example is one of our co-founders would wait outside a grocery store and he would see the food getting thrown into dumpsters, perfectly packaged, sealed would have been sold or full price. And so he would go into the dumpsters and literally dumpster diving to eat it. And I think through seeing that just those two examples, they really found that there was a need for this.

00;04;45;27 - 00;05;06;17
Speaker
So after expanding throughout Denmark and it literally started as a web page, it's kind of funny to hear them tell a story. They would physically walk their computer to stores and be like, Please sign on here. They developed the app. The app became available in the App Store and the Google Play Store At the end of 2016. And then in the beginning of 2017, they expanded into a couple of markets throughout Europe.

00;05;06;17 - 00;05;32;04
Speaker
And we are now in 15 markets across Europe. In August of 2020, the app expanded to the US and then in July of 2021, we came to Canada in Toronto. In September of that year, we went to Vancouver in Tilburg, Montreal and 14. So I think the reason for expansion is obviously there's food waste everywhere and we believe that there is a solution to end food waste, a really simple solution to end food waste.

00;05;32;13 - 00;05;51;15
Speaker
And we also believe in planet without food waste. So we are ambitious, but we we truly believe that you can eliminate food waste. It requires participation of everybody, though. So if you think about like you and I might love saving food waste and might have great tips for what we do at home, but if not everyone is doing it, and if there's a collective participation, we won't have that global impact.

00;05;51;28 - 00;06;19;15
Speaker
What we want to do is make sure that we have as many. So when we enter markets, have a good cohort of partners who can start and can start saving food today, and then that people can also know about it so they can start saving. So it's there's that healthy balance of supply and demand. Very interesting. I mean, I think that I think that there's something that came up actually when we initially connected around Europe being the type of place where people shop.

00;06;19;25 - 00;06;41;24
Speaker
Well, they have smaller fridges. I can attest to this. They very much do have smaller fridges. And there's also just this culture of picking up dinner like on your way home from work or shopping or like shopping locally more frequently. How have you guys found making that transition within North America? I know it's like the land of ginormous freezers, big fridges.

00;06;42;13 - 00;07;09;27
Speaker
You do your monthly Costco trip. Like what does that sort of look like for you? Yeah, I mean, I went to Costco yesterday for my monthly trip, and you're exactly correct. I grew up in Austria and then lived in Berlin for a time during my twenties and that's exactly the culture. It was never that you had. I mean, my fridge in Berlin was the size of the same kind of food to have in my university dorm room, which was like a little beer fridge because there isn't that same kind of mentality around purchasing for weeks at a time.

00;07;10;09 - 00;07;36;25
Speaker
And also the way that food is preserved and stored there is very different. So the the ability to even store food for longer doesn't exist. We obviously know that there's a difference in consumption habits, purchase habits, and even just transient habits in North America. But we've tried to be as responsive to those differences as possible. So if you think about when we expanded to North America, we just mentioned New York City, which has a huge density of restaurants in a walkable distance for people.

00;07;37;07 - 00;07;55;02
Speaker
And the same thing was when we came to Canada, we first came to Toronto. Our goal is to start in downtown urban centers where there is that density and then people can either without having to because we're a pickup app, we won't do delivery without having to drive or then having to travel 45 kilometers. They can pick up food.

00;07;55;29 - 00;08;22;15
Speaker
Once we get a certain number of stores, a good collection of stores with a downtown core and a good variety, then we can slowly start to expand outward into those suburban and exurban spaces. But there needs to be a pretty decent amount of store selection to do that. It doesn't help people very much to have a one off store in the middle of nowhere, because even though you might get a discount there, that store isn't going to do very well in terms of getting their bags saved and people aren't really going to know about it.

00;08;22;24 - 00;08;44;26
Speaker
We really are measured in our approach to expansion. For that reason, we don't want to just enter into a country and say, okay, every food selling business can now be on the app, even though people are always DMing us and always emailing me to say, Why don't you come to my city? And we will. It just needs to be in a measured way to ensure that we have both feet of supply there and that consumers, when they have the demand, can also have the variety to pick.

00;08;45;29 - 00;09;08;16
Speaker
And I think what we need to consider too, is the differences in cultural kind of food purchasing and food consumption habits are always going to be true. We enter each market with a idea. We say we're a very global company with a hyper local focus, and then when you open the app, it is super local because you see the businesses that are close to you in your city, in your region.

00;09;08;27 - 00;09;22;29
Speaker
If we have Starbucks on the app in the UK but we don't have them in Canada, it doesn't really help you to know that there's Starbucks there. What you care about is what can I buy from today and what's the local? Is it a Tim Hortons or is it a local coffee shop that's near me that I can purchase from?

00;09;23;09 - 00;09;46;10
Speaker
So while we do believe the issue is global, it absolutely requires the impact of everybody. It's also a very hyper local mechanism to get people to say that circles around them collectively rather than, you know, again, traveling 100 miles to go pick something up. There is sometimes that novelty. I mean, if I go to a different part of the city, I definitely pick up from something different, but it's based on where I'm already going.

00;09;47;22 - 00;10;16;18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that hyper local global company with a hyper local focus was the kernel of an idea for this episode in terms of like when we initially tried it, I was like, we should go in so many different directions. I'm so fascinated by your business model. I'm fascinated by, well, actually, let me say I'm really interested in how you decide on those markets in terms of appetite from consumers.

00;10;16;27 - 00;10;35;19
Speaker
So you mentioned like you want to be able to have you do it in a measured way. You want to make sure that you have the right number of partners on board and that there's also appetite from consumers. How do you go about understanding that? Well, I'll say smarter people than me figure that out. And they do. So They do.

00;10;35;19 - 00;10;58;13
Speaker
So I think in a really brilliant way, Toronto is the natural first entry market into Canada, so that was a pretty easy decision. We are headquartered in Toronto and the majority of our staff is located in Toronto, so it also allowed us the longest lead time we had to a launch. It was like three months when we decided not to launch till when we actually launched, which now that time period is much slower.

00;10;58;13 - 00;11;26;15
Speaker
It's like a three week turnaround. Obviously Vancouver and Montreal made a lot of sense there. They're just in terms of population size, they will always be our hubs, they'll be our biggest cities and we definitely did not want to enter Canada without having a strategy for also entering into Quebec, which is a really important market for us. There is actually interestingly, because the app has such a foothold in France, there's a ton of already strong brand brand name recognition in Quebec.

00;11;26;23 - 00;11;48;24
Speaker
Yeah, it's really, really interesting. And also interestingly, Quebec has much more diversity in terms of choice for our partners who do similar work to what we do, whereas the rest of Canada really doesn't. We don't really have a 1 to 1 comparison anywhere else in Canada. So that's been an interesting and very singularly separate. We do. One of my colleagues is specifically focused on Quebec from a PR standpoint.

00;11;48;24 - 00;12;07;18
Speaker
We do very directed specific work there. The messaging is unique there as well. But I think the other important part on that, you know, global local kind of balance too, is when we enter a market, it doesn't do us any good to say we are this massive global company because what you want is something that matters to you on a day to day basis.

00;12;07;18 - 00;12;24;21
Speaker
So we really do only launch when we have strong partners who we believe are local that have. And that's why I said like Starbucks wouldn't necessarily be a launch partner. We love them, we want them on the app. But what we want is the local, you know, Sara's grocery shop or Megan's coffee shop, because those are embedded within the community.

00;12;25;11 - 00;13;00;27
Speaker
We also know that there are some markets who are naturally more well attuned to our message than others. Vancouver is a really good example of this. Think Over has a really strong sustainability mindset. They are fantastically on leading the way and a lot of anti waste mechanisms and a lot of things that they do collectively. They were the first, I believe, in the country to have no third party bag policy, which we had to contend with shortly after we launched to figure out how do we get food into the hands of our consumers if there are no bags, And they've been kind of national and I think North American leader in terms of some of

00;13;00;27 - 00;13;22;14
Speaker
that, you know, having a focus on sustainability as opposed to a focus on profit. So that was a natural next step for us. The other markets that we want to enter into are ones that definitely have surplus food waste. So while our mission is really environmental, we know that there's a huge profit driver for businesses to ensure that they are not wasting food because it's wasted money.

00;13;23;00 - 00;13;51;21
Speaker
So wherever there is, you know, again, a downtown core or a large population of people, we do believe that there is a really easy way for them to adopt our what we just launched Windsor and London last week and Victoria last week as well. So when I think of Windsor and London as these massive cities, but I went to school in London and so I have a fondness for the downtown, the Richmond row and all the restaurants there, and there's over 500,000 people who live in those two markets.

00;13;51;21 - 00;14;15;25
Speaker
So there is, when you think of them as kind of a region, a really strong food scene as well, we will slowly start to expand outside of just those kind of larger cities. We've entered into a number of smaller markets in Quebec, Sherbrooke, and we've entered across southern Ontario as well to go to Oakville, Burlington, Hamilton. And as we start to see some of that migration move, we see more people know about us.

00;14;15;25 - 00;14;32;13
Speaker
And so then it becomes easier to return to those markets. But there really is in the end of the day, the goal is every food selling app in the world in Canada to be on the app and every person with a smartphone to be able to access the app. And that just starts kind of slowly and one business at a time.

00;14;32;25 - 00;15;11;10
Speaker
We when we enter into a market as well, we might enter with 50 businesses, but slowly there will be 100 businesses and then they will continuously be added. So it's kind of just a snapshot and then we lead. It's continuous growth everywhere and just continue to sort of I feel like the thing I really want to get to is this idea of you're the PR manager, you you are essentially and tell me if I'm wrong, but responsible for like sort of creating a message or a story, I guess, within the market for for too good to go.

00;15;11;20 - 00;15;38;04
Speaker
And I think that's a really interesting proposition given this like global business, but hyperlocal offering and maybe it is a little bit simpler than than I think it is. But yeah, my gut is that you do have to adapt that depending on the types of customers that you're trying to acquire or the type of app users that you're trying to sort of grow within those spaces, how have you, how have you.

00;15;38;04 - 00;15;59;19
Speaker
So you've obviously taken over from a North American perspective, like what did you bring from and what kind of knowledge did you bring in to developing that story from the European markets and how do you have to adapt it depending on, you know, say it's Toronto versus Windsor or London or Victoria, if at all? Your city? Yeah, no, we absolutely are spot on.

00;15;59;22 - 00;16;18;26
Speaker
We absolutely do. I'll take the example of we launched in the Ottawa Gatineau region in June of last year due to 2022, and we looked at that market as a singular market, just understanding that there was a language like, you know, French on one side or the other. So we had to ensure that we had spokespeople for both.

00;16;19;10 - 00;16;42;08
Speaker
Actually, when we were doing market development, we also learned just by doing research and speaking with people, that there were motivating factors that were separate for each. So Ottawa was more motivated by the environmental wanting to be a leader in the country, wanting to have sustainable companies join their wanting to be thought of as not following along, but actually driving change toward environmental change.

00;16;42;16 - 00;17;09;14
Speaker
Whereas Gatineau was highly motivated by cost. So that marketplace really wanted to be able to, from a business standpoint, recoup lost revenue and from a consumer standpoint, get food for one third. The cost. And we do that in every market that we go in to. What we say in Alberta isn't going to be the same thing as what we say in B.C. and what we say in parts of B.C. isn't going to be the same as what we say in, you know, there are differences based on what we know those businesses want to hear and those consumers want to hear.

00;17;10;07 - 00;17;45;00
Speaker
Really, my job becomes a lot easier because we have so many local partners. So it allows us to tell the story of that region through the local partners. We will never enter into a marketplace with just chain stores. It will always be a healthy mix of both larger, you know, maybe even a Ontario wide grocer like Metro, who we have on the app throughout all of Ontario, but then also family grocers or also potentially a corner store fruit market, because there needs to be that healthy mix to allow people to have variety, but also because we know there are surplus waste at those places.

00;17;45;07 - 00;18;10;01
Speaker
When I joined, as I said, we didn't even have the app, so we had five years worth of historical knowledge from Europe and we had it at that time. We were in 15 markets, so there were 15 of me in Europe who had done my job that I could lean on to, but they were, you know, 2 to 3 years of experience in and they already had a media base and a market base and a consumer base who knew about them.

00;18;10;19 - 00;18;28;08
Speaker
What we had to do was introduce ourselves. But before we could even do that, we had to get the level up a little bit in terms of knowing what the surplus food waste issue was in Canada and what the food waste issue was in Canada. And I, I will tell you that I didn't know food waste is such an egregious issue in Canada.

00;18;28;08 - 00;18;49;11
Speaker
Before joining to the to go before I was doing research on this I mean will be a classic PR manager right now hit me with some stats because like I think you told me a couple the last time we talked, I was floored. Yeah there's we actually used to have and we recently did a rebrand and so we read it our website, so it's gone.

00;18;49;11 - 00;19;12;05
Speaker
But we had this page that was my favorite on the site that used to rank every country, and Canada was the last. So Canada was 58% of all the food we produce, the global average is 40%. So we're super over indexing on our food waste. We also contribute 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from food less. If you think of fly travel's only 1%.

00;19;12;05 - 00;19;44;01
Speaker
So I think we're all trying to think about driving electric and not flying as much, but we eat and throw out food every day. And so that's a huge contributor. Canadians also through $2,000 worth of food added a year, which oh my goodness. Yeah. And we as we contend with rising inflation and grocery store prices and the cost of everything going up to think that we're actively throwing away $2,000 that could be in our pocket is insane.

00;19;44;27 - 00;20;01;25
Speaker
And we do a lot of measurement around the amount that we're putting back into Canadians pockets because everything they purchase on the app, they would have paid a full price for us. They're saving it at every purchase. The same thing for businesses. Everything that they would have had to donate, give away or throw out is money back in their pocket.

00;20;01;25 - 00;20;21;19
Speaker
So there's real value to what we're offering them. We also know that when we joined, we were in the middle of COVID and we had seen a huge change in people's purchasing behavior as well as what businesses raised and what they knew that they could sell. Shortly thereafter, we started to see the effects of inflation really have an impact.

00;20;21;19 - 00;20;46;18
Speaker
So we started, I believe, the first pitch I wrote about inflation. We were at 6% food inflation in the year. Now we're upwards of 12 and that happened in the course of a year. So it's I think we can talk about anecdotally, things are expensive, you feel it, but really food is expensive. And we we've seen that. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, we saw ads in the grocery store in Ottawa being grilled to figure out how can we lower food costs, what is what is really the cause of this?

00;20;47;12 - 00;21;08;12
Speaker
And I don't see that going down for a while. As much as we want to demand that things get a little bit under control, we're we're not going to see the impacts of any kind of inflationary decrease soon. So consumers in need a better way to be able to control their food bills. And if the added benefit is they're also reducing waste, which is better for the environment, then we believe that's a win for everybody.

00;21;12;02 - 00;21;37;19
Speaker
Yeah, it's so crazy. And I'm wondering like when you're when you're constructing those more hyper localized messages, like, I like that you use some examples around, you know, for one area cost was sort of the biggest issue or savings would have been the biggest issue. To what extent do you lean into those? The reason that too good to go was built is to eliminate food waste.

00;21;37;19 - 00;22;01;00
Speaker
Like, to what extent do you lean into those emotional benefits? I guess that people might expect from joining the app on the consumer side or I guess on the business side, those like emotional benefits as opposed to the hard sort of like, you know, grocery bills are being saying you or your time is is saved because you don't have to go to a Costco or whatever.

00;22;01;08 - 00;22;20;01
Speaker
How do you choose between those? Again, it's really based on what do we think is the strongest message that we have for that audience. So there's a lot of times and as you can imagine as well, I think my history as a PR manager, I either worked in consumer PR, I work in corporate PR, or I work and B2B, PR or B2C.

00;22;20;07 - 00;22;41;28
Speaker
This we do everything. We do lifestyle, we do environmental, we do to give you the C. So there's not probably a day where we're just focusing on one thing. Usually our message translates across a number of different verticals and it's important that we ensure that we really are capturing all of that. We've done a lot of work on the social side about, you know, kind of the collective responsibility we all have.

00;22;41;28 - 00;22;58;04
Speaker
But I think people don't love to hear that they have a responsibility to be good to our planet because that feels like homework. It feels like, oh, this is now a thing I'm going to have to feel bad about if I don't do. Whereas to get to go, the model makes you feel good because you feel like you're saving money.

00;22;58;04 - 00;23;19;24
Speaker
You feel like you're doing something great for the environment. You're also supporting a local business. There's a really there's a fantastic and it's that wasn't the goal, but there's a there's a real sense of warmth that whenever I pick up a bag, it makes me really excited. And what we've also really learned throughout the journey that we've been in Canada is people have an affection for food that they've kind of lost or forgotten.

00;23;20;08 - 00;23;42;03
Speaker
Personally, I regained my love for food during the pandemic because I was spending so much more time producing food for myself and cooking at home, even doing grocery shopping with more detailed precision because I didn't want to make as many trips or because I wasn't doing delivery. I had more time and I really regained the love for cooking and experimental cooking, trying things out.

00;23;42;11 - 00;24;09;10
Speaker
We've seen a lot of that comes through as well from our partners who we did a recipe book at the end of 2021. Oh yeah, it's actually very fun. We asked partners to contribute some recipes. We did so on a corporate level as well, and the goal was to help people remix their leftovers. So it was take a food that would typically be a surprise, like turn it into something new and fresh so that you're not having to be like, it's a burden to eat a leftover three days in a row.

00;24;09;15 - 00;24;28;25
Speaker
It's familiar to anyone and people are so creative. We hear so much about the creativity from our partners, about things they're already doing in store to reduce waste, which I love every time we can speak directly to a person. I learned so much about ingenuity in terms of the activity that happens, the love and efficiency that they produce.

00;24;29;06 - 00;24;51;06
Speaker
Sharing those stories really is is so much more interesting to me than talking about the monetary impacts that we do. We do know that monetary is a huge driver and a huge importance. If we can't afford to eat, that's a big problem. But the love and affection that everyone who makes food has for it is a huge part of why we don't want that food to go to waste because they put effort into it, they put the resources into it.

00;24;51;17 - 00;25;11;10
Speaker
And if you think about it, that's it's a really beautiful thing to make. And to have it go to waste is is a tragedy. We love hearing from partners to every time we enter our market spreadsheet we keep so we can go back and see what kind of fun things partners do. And we always kind of anecdotally drop those into conversation because people are doing so much more than you think.

00;25;11;10 - 00;25;34;12
Speaker
It's not just mass production of food that's heartless. It's really lovingly prepared. Yeah, just made me think of what you just said and maybe think of a piece of research we ran at the beginning of the pandemic. Maybe maybe halfway through the pandemic where we talked about and we were asking people like, What are you enjoying about the pandemic, if anything?

00;25;34;23 - 00;25;53;28
Speaker
And one of the things was this idea of like being resourceful. So when you talked about wanting to join the, you know, enjoying picking up a bag of food from a partner and being like, oh, my gosh, I wonder what's inside that. Obviously, there's that element, but there's also the like, oh, like I'm doing a good thing element.

00;25;53;28 - 00;26;20;17
Speaker
So we did it. It was an economic survey and we were asking people like, Are there any silver linings to this? And people like, you know, I'm learning to do more with less and like learning to yeah, just like treat things with care, I guess in terms of, you know, recreating something in the fridge that you might have thrown out previously because you might not have as much disposable income, but you can order in.

00;26;21;07 - 00;26;39;12
Speaker
So those types of things like. So that really resonated with me. Like I think there's definitely something and not I feel like I should go in so many more directions, but I'm going to have to close out soon. So I think the last thing I wanted to touch on was just this idea of like B2B versus B2C versus standpoint.

00;26;40;01 - 00;27;12;25
Speaker
But to what extent would you say the messaging is similar? Like how do you handle those two different audiences? Are there? Obviously there are distinct messages for each, but do you worry a lot about those two messages mixing? Like do you have different a different channel strategy for those those different routes to market? Because I'm a consumer, but I also work at a insights and strategy agency.

00;27;13;06 - 00;27;44;26
Speaker
So I might, you know, I don't work in restaurants, but if I did, I might also be your partner. Target. Yeah. Yes. To all of the above. I worry that we're not necessarily messaging to either. I worry that we to B2C focus from time to time. I worry that we're not doing a great enough call for businesses to join in because that's our most important sector really as as soon as we get more businesses to join, the supply can increase the variety, can increase the consumer experience will increase.

00;27;45;07 - 00;28;03;15
Speaker
We have and I will absolutely say that this is not my area expertise. We have a very strong partner marketing team in North America. We have a B2B marketing manager who really helps too, and we've got the entire care team to forgive me for not mentioning that off the top. They speak with partners every day. They hear about the struggles of partners.

00;28;03;15 - 00;28;28;12
Speaker
Every day they hear about what matters to partners every day. The biggest thing that differentiates too good to go is the surprise bag. So if you purchase from us, you're not getting an itemized list of what's in your bag. You're receiving a value amount and you pay one third for that. The reason that that came about is because partner said at the end of the day, when they're closing out, they don't want another task which would be photographing, itemizing, putting a description and that would be a huge distraction to using it.

00;28;29;07 - 00;28;51;10
Speaker
So this is a really simple, easy to use, a very effective way for them to move some of their product that we wouldn't know if we didn't speak to our partners on a very consistent basis. So our partner support team and our care team is always talking to partners about what can we do better for them. Interestingly, I just talked to a partner before I jumped on with you because we're doing some outreach in Victoria.

00;28;51;20 - 00;29;07;13
Speaker
I was kind of briefing her on here's what the meeting opportunity will look like. You know, I can give you a brief we can do a pre work, which is like any press is good press, I want it. And I think that's a huge benefit we can offer our partners as well, is that we do a full, very strong marketing team across North America.

00;29;07;13 - 00;29;27;28
Speaker
We are actively we don't do any paid media, so everything we do is earned coverage. So we are we always try to uncover stories that we can sell into media, let them know that there's something unique and different that might not have been shared in another market. But we do do a lot of direct and B2B coverage. So that might be if we have a partner announcement.

00;29;28;08 - 00;29;46;23
Speaker
We are recently launching the 7-Eleven across Canada, which is fantastic and we're super excited to have that on board. And so that will be a B2B play where we share that with marketing professionals, we share it with restaurant, convenience store news. I love them, they're always covering us. And so we do a lot of targeted work there, but that's a niche audience.

00;29;46;23 - 00;30;02;28
Speaker
What we are also aware of is every business owner is also a consumer. So if we can have a strong B2C message, we will be able to capture some of that B2B audience. We hear a lot that we'll walk into stores and the person we're going to tell might say, Oh, I grew up, I know you, I use you.

00;30;03;02 - 00;30;25;05
Speaker
And they've never thought to do it in their own right. Well, that's what I was thinking because I was like, Yeah, would I have thought, you know, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, of course I would be like, Oh, yeah, I should think about getting too good to go here if I worked in a restaurant. But yeah, yeah, it's just interesting how you sort of segment your life into, like, work life, right?

00;30;25;13 - 00;30;44;12
Speaker
So yeah, and I don't think a lot of people I don't think that that's which happens. I think the more we expand, the more well-known we become that will start to naturally that will not really change. There's not a store we can go into in the UK, for example, that hasn't heard of too good to go. But there are millions of stores in Canada who still don't.

00;30;45;02 - 00;31;05;01
Speaker
We're still in our NZ. As much as we like to think like, Oh, we're we're so established. We do need to continue to expand. We do need to continue to permeate the market. In terms of media, we welcome any selling business. So honestly, my plea is always if you know, if it's selling business, if you own one, if you work at one, there is an opportunity for you to join the app.

00;31;05;01 - 00;31;22;01
Speaker
It is super simple to do. Just go to our website. You can book for business and you can sign on immediately. The same thing is true. If we're not yet in your market, we will be. But you can DMA, you can message us and say like, I really want this because that also helps us to decide where are we going to expand to next?

00;31;22;01 - 00;31;39;29
Speaker
If there's a large enough cohort of businesses who are eager to join. So there's I think it's it's hard to say, have patience. It's hard to say for us to grow in a measured way, but we really have seen that this model works, and that's by having an expansion strategy that allows us to do that dual pronged marketplace.

00;31;39;29 - 00;31;58;05
Speaker
We really can be successful. Our goal is not, as I said, flash in and leave like we're here for the long haul. So the stronger we can be in those markets, the more partners we can have, the better we can reduce food waste and the better consumer experience we can offer. I don't think that there's a better way to end.

00;31;58;10 - 00;32;18;19
Speaker
I think that you just you just nailed People should go and check you guys out. Sarah, thank you so much for being here with me today. And yeah, and we will talk to talk to you soon. I love the app, by the way. We talked about this last time, but you are a consumer out there listening. Please do download it.