The 3 surprise bags I got in July 2024

Save a surprise bag from Too Good To Go to reduce surplus food from being wasted at participating restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, bakeries, and more in Canada (you won’t know what’s in it until you pick it up).  It’s a free app that anyone can download.  Aside from saving money on food, you can try new stores you haven’t heard of before. 

This is my monthly roundup of the surprise bags that I buy.

(Where there is a clear price tag of the goods, surprise bags that meet or are above the minimum value are marked with a green checkmark and surprise bags that do not meet the minimum value are marked with a red X.  E.g. If a surprise bag costs $7.99, the minimum value of goods received should be $24 worth.)

In July 2024, I purchased 3 surprise bags:

July 26:

K-JIMI TGTG $7.99 surprise bag

• K-JIMI
• 5317 Yonge St., North York
• Pick up time:  11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Small Whole Cake:  $7.99 (no tax)
• Store rating at the time of purchase:  3.8/5 (13 reviews).
• Contents:  Small strawberry cream cake $21.40. ❌
• My husband helped me pick up this order.  When he arrived at the store at 1:40 p.m., he said the door was locked.  He called the business and no one picked up with no voice mail service either.  It took another couple of minutes before someone unlocked the door from the inside for him.  Very inconvenient considering that he arrived within the pickup time to collect the surprise bag.
• I was really disappointed to see such a small cake inside the large box.  It had shifted during transit too.  I couldn’t believe that such a small cake cost $21.40 retail.  The strawberry on top was very big.  There was a lot of rich dense cream and very little actual cake in between the layers.  This was a disappointing bag, but I’m grateful that I used a voucher for it and to get to try a new store regardless.
• Update:  I let TGTG know about the unmet value and they gave me a $4 voucher to make up for the difference.  Wow, this is the first time they’ve given me a voucher less than $7.99!  So interesting.

Metro TGTG $12.99 surprise bag

• Metro (20 Church Ave)
• 20 Church Ave., North York
• Pick up time:  12 to 6 p.m.
• Assorted Meat:  $12.99 (no tax)
• Store rating at time of purchase: 4.5/5 (231 reviews).
• Contents:  Chicken wings $13.45, Pork loin centre chops $5.99, Pork loin centre chops $6.02, Pork tenderloin bruschetta feta stuffed $8.08, Pork tenderloin brie spinach/pesto stuffed $8.35.  Total value:  $41.89. ✅
• It is so tough to get a meat surprise bag from Metro now!  The surprise bag gets released around 6:15 p.m. daily and even when I manage to reserve it successfully, they have recently always been cancelling them the morning of the pickup because they have no more surplus.  I only got this bag because I happened to check the app on the morning of and they had some extras for reserving.  Our first meat bag in several months!
• I’m glad that the value meets the price and that there is a great variety in this bag.

July 30:

Tim Hortons TGTG $4.99 surprise bag

• Tim Hortons (10 Vogell Road)
• 10 Vogell Rd., Richmond Hill
• Pick up time:  6 to 8 p.m.
• Baked Goods:  $4.99 (no tax)
• Store rating at the time of purchase:  4.4/5 (178 reviews).
• Contents:  6 muffins (Chocolate Chip $2.19, Fruit Explosion $2.49, Wild Blueberry $2.19, Raisin Bran $2.19, Lemon Poppyseed Cheesecake $2.49 Carrot Cake with Walnut $2.49), 1 cheese croissant $2+.  Total value: $16.04+. ✅
• I received a free voucher for a Tim Hortons bag from TGTG as a promotion to use by July 31.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to redeem it because when I reserved the surprise bag, instead of using the $4.99 voucher that I had in my account, it automatically pulled the next available voucher which was a $7.99 one.  That isn’t fair as I didn’t want to use one of my own $7.99 vouchers for a $4.99 bag and I was unable to choose the voucher I wanted (there is currently no option of choosing the voucher you want to use — a tech issue they should fix).  I e-mailed TGTG about it, but they misunderstood my issue and didn’t give me a solution.  I took it in my own hands and found a workaround by using the $7.99 voucher on a store first before using the $4.99 voucher on a Tim Hortons bag.  Then I cancelled the order and got back the $7.99 voucher in my account.  Can’t believe I had to do it this way, but I’m glad that it worked.
• Considering this specific store has a rating of 4.4/5 stars on the app, I was disappointed to see that the box was full of muffins (not all Tim Horton stores are rated the same).  I thought there would have been more variety of baked goods.  The baked goods were fresh though.

See what I got in my surprise bags in January 2024,   February 2024,   March 2024,   April 2024,   May 2024,   June 2024,   July 2024 (this post),   August 2024,   September 2024,   October 2024,    November 2024,   December 2024.