The ORLEN filling stations network, the largest in the Czech Republic and operated by the ORLEN Unipetrol Group, has announced another move towards sustainability. Selected stations in Prague and Brno are launching a pilot project in collaboration with the social impact company Too Good To Go. This initiative helps people reduce food waste. Using the app, customers can book Surprise Bags (in Czech: Dobrovaky Stop Cafe), which contain unsold yet still high-quality food products from the Stop Cafe offering.
The ORLEN Unipetrol Group has been developing its sustainability and CSR activities for a long term. Excess food is a significant environmental and social issue, and the collaboration with Too Good To Go, which operates the world's largest marketplace for surplus food, provides a concrete solution to tackle this problem. The project also expands the offer of services for customers and brings a new dimension to the Stop Cafe concept.
“Sustainability is one of the crucial tracks that we follow within our retail strategy. Thanks to the collaboration with Too Good To Go, we can reduce the amount of food waste effectively and offer our customers an attractive way to join these efforts. We believe the project has great potential. We want to roll it out in full throughout the Czech Republic in the first half of next year. The concept is already running in countries such as Germany and Austria,” says Agnieszka Bobrukiewicz, a member of the Board of Directors of the ORLEN Unipetrol Group with responsibility for the retail segment in Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia, and for the convenience development in the ORLEN Group.
The Too Good To Go application is available in 19 countries. It offers a straightforward principle: it aims to give customers an option to save high-quality yet unsold food that would otherwise end up as waste. The Surprise Bag offers a broad range of Stop Cafe products – ranging from pastries and croissants to traditional and modern sandwiches, wraps, paninis, and baguettes. The bag’s content varies every day depending on the current surpluses but always includes fresh and high-quality products that would otherwise be unused. The pilot project offers two variants: a version with salty products for CZK 79 and a bag with sweet products for CZK 49. Customers can book and pay for them easily using the Too Good To Go app. The products can be picked at selected ORLEN sites between noon and 4 pm – ideally when they stop by to fuel up their tank or buy a cup of coffee. The pilot project currently includes selected stations in Prague and in Brno.
“The collaboration with ORLEN is an important step to expand the reach of our mission – fighting against food waste – also in the segment of filling stations. Customers appreciate the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable world through their purchases. And the Surprise Bags give them this option. ORLEN is the first network of filling stations in the Czech Republic to join Too Good To Go. We believe that together, we can also be an inspiration for other businesses,” adds Anna Podkowińska-Tretyn, Country Director of Too Good To Go for Poland and Czechia.
According to an international survey conducted by Too Good To Go, 96% of customers find it important that merchants actively cut down on food waste. These findings are also supported by the STEM/MARK survey from 2024, stating that 87% of Czechs are against food waste, and 90% would agree that businesses should offer surplus food products at reduced prices. Furthermore, according to Too Good To Go’s data, one Surprise Bag that contains about one kilogram of food products on average helps prevent 2.7 kg of CO₂ emissions, save 810 litres of water, and 2.8 m² of farmland. The individual values are based on an independent survey carried out in 2023 by Mérieux Nutrisciences | Blonk that was verified by Oxford University and WRAP researchers. The survey utilised measurements based on the lifecycle index of food products saved from being wasted.
ORLEN – the international network of fuels, energy and refreshments
The ORLEN network of filling stations is a member of the ORLEN Unipetrol Group owned by the international ORLEN Group, which runs more than 3,500 fuel stations in seven Central European countries – Poland, Czechia, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia. In Czechia, the ORLEN network comprises 441 stations with a 28.5% market share in the volume of fuels sold. The ORLEN network is a market leader in terms of both the number of sites and the volume of fuels sold. The popularity of the ORLEN brand with Czech consumers is reflected by the fact that the ORLEN network of filling stations has been awarded as the Most Trustworthy Brand in Czechia six times and as the Merchant of the Year three times.
At its stations, ORLEN offers premium Efecta fuel with a proven purifying effect and top-class Verva fuel that cares for the engine system and offers enhanced performance parameters. ORLEN sites also provide alternative fuels, including liquified petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), synthetic fuel HVO100, and battery- and hydrogen-driven e-mobility. ORLEN offers electricity at 294 charging points and operates hydrogen refuelling stations in Prague- Barrandov and Litvínov-Záluží.
The Stop Cafe concept is a significant part of the offering, being a crucial pillar in ORLEN brand’s convenience sales. In the Czech Republic, Stop Cafe is available at 357 out of 441 filling stations, i.e., at more than 80% of them. It is offered at nearly 2,500 sites within the entire international network. Stop Cafe offers a broad range of meals and food products – from popular hotdogs and coffee to more than 1,000 products, including packaged food, ready-to-serve meals, and specialities in traditional, vegetarian, and vegan versions. The offer keeps developing – the ORLEN competence centre in Prague is working on new product ranges focused on a healthy lifestyle, including breakfasts, bakery products, ready-to-serve meals, and private brand products that will react to the current trends and customer needs.
ORLEN also issues its own fuel cards, EASY and BUSINESS, and runs two mobile apps – the loyalty ORLEN app and a car care app, Mycí digi linka.
Contact details:
Lada Gadas, +420 705 839 909, email: lada.gadas@orlenunipetrol.cz
About Too Good To Go
Too Good To Go is a social impact company that connects users with partners to rescue unsold food, helping food distributors unlock value from surplus With 120 million registered users and 180,000 active partners across 19 countries, Too Good To Go operates the world's largest marketplace for surplus food.
Since its launch in 2016, Too Good To Go has helped to save over 500 million meals from going to waste, the equivalent to 1.3 million tonnes of CO2e avoided. Project Drawdown (2020) ranked reducing food waste as the number one action you can take to help tackle climate change, by limiting the temperature rise to 2˚C by 2100.
Further details on Too Good To Go’s mission are available at its website.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Kateřina Turková, B2C Marketing Manager, Too Good To Go
Tel.: +420 601 547 302
Email: media@toogoodtogo.cz
Patricie Turková, Account Director, Rubikon PR
Tel.: +420 775 929 191
Email: patricie.turkova@rubikonpr.cz