What is the Flashfood App

Flashfood is an app that connects shoppers with heavily discounted food nearing its best-before date. If you’ve read my article on food expiration dates, then you know that you can often get away with eating items even after their best buy dates have come and gone. Yes, that’s safe to do.

Now there was a way to find them and get them at a discount? Well, that’s awesome. In fact, Flashfood says that it helps shoppers buy groceries at up to 50% off. What kinds of groceries? Well meats, dairy, seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables and more.

Where to find Flashfood

You’ll need to download the Flashfood app to your phone. It works with both Apple and Android devices. After I downloaded it and searched a nearby grocery store, here’s what I found.

One, most of the Flashfood items I had access to were in the dairy aisle. Some items I found included:

• Organic milk marked down to $2.74 from $5.49
• Oikos Triple Zero yogurt (my fave) six pack marked down to $2.99 from $5.99.

Plus, its best buy date isn’t until nearly three weeks from now. In addition, there was a whole lot of cheese.

Two, there was fresh produce included as well, such as apples, oranges and bagged salad. All told there were 51 items I could have purchased via the Flashfood app in a single day. This was all from my local Giant Eagle supermarket in Western Pennsylvania. Granted, it was not the Giant Eagle location in my town. I would have to drive 20 minutes to get to a participating Giant Eagle.

Where can you use the Flashfood app

According to a press release I found from the company, right now there are more than 1,500 grocery stores, supermarkets and other retailers that have partnered with Flashfood.

This is in the United States and Canada–Flashfood is a Canadian company. Right now the biggest concentration of participating stores in the United States is in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.

Flashfood retail partners

It helps to know which retailers work with Flashfood so you can figure out if there is a store near you that offers this service.

To date, these are the U.S. stores that have Flashfood:

• Family Fare
• Giant Eagle
• Giant Food (no longer working with the app)
• Martin’s Markets
• Meijer
• Save a Lot
• Spartan Nash
• Stop and Shop
• Tops Friendly Markets
• VG’s Grocery

I’ve also noticed a few single store locations that participate with Flashfood, such as a local delicatessen.

How does the Flashfood work

OK, so now that you know where you can find these Flashfood discounts, I’m sure you want to know how it works. Well, to shop the Flashfood deals, you will be shopping in the app exclusively. There is not an online option on a website.

Basically, you choose everything you want to buy via the app, checkout and pay for it on the app. Then, you’ll have to drive to the store to pick up your order in the specially marked Flashfood zone.

Keep in mind that this is not part of that grocery store’s shopping app. Therefore, if you like to order your groceries online, you’ll need to make two stops.

For example, if I was doing curbside express pickup at Giant Eagle for my regular groceries, I would still need to go inside Giant Eagle to get my Flashfood order. In other words, it is two separate transactions and two separate “actions” to get my groceries. Make sense?

Flashfood promo and referral code

Here’s some good news: in addition to saving up to 50% of groceries, you can share your referral code with friends. They save money, and so do you.

This is how it works. One, you share your exclusive referral code with friends. That’s mine below.

Two, once a friend shops on Flashfood and spends at least $10, then they can cash in that referral code and get $5 off. Three, once they do that, you get your own promo code for $5 off your next order. You’ll find that promo code under “Rewards” inside the app.

Other Flashfood benefits

We compost our food scraps at home. I try to do whatever I can to keep food out of landfills. It’s also why I’ll put my shredded paper in the compost bin. Eventually, it becomes dirt that I can use in my garden.

Well, Flashfood diverts food waste from landfills, too. According to Giant Eagle, they believe that since partnering with Flashfood in 2021, they have diverted more than one million pounds of food from landfills. Overall, Flashfood claims its program has diverted more than 50 million pounds of food from being thrown away into landfills. Finally, in places where food insecurity is a reality, using Flashfood can help families find groceries at a savings.

Here is a link to the Flashfood website for more information.

Like Flashfood: Too Good to Go App

After writing this review of Flashfood, I discovered another, similar app that focuses on surplus food. It’s called Too Good to Go. Unlike Flashfood, though, Too Good to Go does not focus primarily on supermarkets, though I did find some nearby Whole Foods Markets participating.

Instead, with Too Good to Go, you’re buying what the app calls “surprise bags.” That is, for a certain price, you’ll get a literal mixed bag of items in a certain category. So at the Whole Foods Market in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, near where I live now in Maine, I could spend $6.99 for a bakery bag filled with bread, muffins and the like. There is no guarantee what will be in the bag or how much. But if you’re a Whole Foods shopper anyway and like a bakery bargain, then this might interest you. I found similar kinds of bakery surprise bags at a nearby bagel shop as well as a vegan bakery.

While bakeries, bake shops and other bread-centric stores seemed to dominate, there are some interesting non-bakery options, too. For instance, there is a local seafood market that lets you get a surprise bag of leftover fresh catches of the day that haven’t sold out. Also, an Indian restaurant has a surprise bag of goodies from its buffet bar.

Where I found the greatest concentration of surprise bags was Circle K, the gas station convenience store that often participates in National Doughnut Day or National Cookie Day giveaways. In these instances, this kind of surprise bag is labeled Circle K Treats & Eats and, according to the app, could contain “ready-to-eat goods that may include sandwiches, wraps, salads, snacks, pastries, chips or fresh produce.” The price for this surprise bag? $3.99.

More about the Too Good to Go app here.

Helping with reduced SNAP EBT benefits

As I’m sure you’re aware, in 2025 Washington passed legislation that will eventually cut the SNAP EBT benefits for some of America’s poorest families. They are literally taking food away from hungry parents and children. I’m hoping that by sharing resources like Flashfood and Too Good to Go, families that need food assistance will discover another way to supplement what goes in their refrigerators and pantries.

If you’re aware of other services or apps like these two, please let me know.