We were in our newly opened Starbucks (with Drive Thru) when I asked the manageress what they did with all the cakes, cookies and sandwiches when they were near their sell by date.

She said, ‘To Good to Go’. We had heard of this app before as our daughter had used it in the UK, but didn’t know it existed in France – especially under the same name! ‘Trop bon pour partir’ isn’t as succinct and hasn’t the same ring to it.

We live 10 minutes from a vast commercial centre, one of the biggest in the Grand Est region of 10 departments.

We saw that at the end of the day we could get a whole meal from Flunch – a name using a word play of ‘Fast’ plus ‘Lunch’. After paying on-line via the App, I went off at the given time to fetch it. I presumed that having paid, that was all that was necessary, but apparently you need to show the actual order from the phone that the payment came from. I explained to the girl that this was our first order. Her reply was, ‘C’est évidemment’, but not in any nasty way.

Taking the bags and containers home, was a bit like Christmas coming early. ‘Oh look what’s in this one’, ‘You can open that one’, Wow look at this!’ We had enough food for us both to have 2 full main meals. The starter of melon and parma ham was enough for breakfast for both of us and there was a baguette as well.

We didn’t really know how it worked, but soon found that several of our local food shops were on the app. Case à Pain is our nearest shop, just 10 minutes from our house. Its name is also a word play. Caisse à Pain is a large rectangular basket tall enough to contain bagettes or also shorter rectangular plastic open weave crates.

Then one day we found our new Drive Thru Starbucks were offering a bag of goodies. How exciting! We got several of the pyramid shaped croissant pastry pistachio filled delights and two cheese and ham toasties and 2 deserts – the tiramisu ones in little plastic jars. That was fun.

This week we went for a walk round the block depositing dried out felt-tips to Cultura’s recycling boxes and while we were at it why not get a bag of goodies from Louise’s Boulangerie? The last time we had received a generously filled baguette, a bag of pearl sugar coated chouettes and a pain au raisin and a croissant or two.

We turned the corner – the bakery was in darkness and the doors firmly locked! What had happened – were we too late? A quick check on the App! We realised that we had ordered from another branch of Louise situated in a new part of the city dedicated to selling cars. That branch was still open and we had 15 minutes to get there. Our gentle evening stroll was now a rapid march home and a speedy drive out of town. We didn’t know this area at all well, so it was my job to do the reconnaissance on the right hand side and hubby’s to do it on the left. BOULANGERIE was written in big letters on a building ahead. Fortunately ‘Louise’ was in smaller letters. A couple were leaving the packed parking places as we arrived, so no time was lost. The shop was still open and the 2 employees laughed at our account of our mistake.

The goodies were a loaf of artisan bread, an individual apple tart, a light jam-filled muffin and some more light as a feather chou mini-puffs with coarse pearl sugar –Chouquettes.

We have never been in the habit of buying a fresh baguette each day, nor even monthly. But these days we are eating like real frenchies a pain au raisin for breakfast and a filled baguette for lunch.

Winter is coming when our breakfast will be a bowl of hot porridge, not a croissant and hot soup will be more appropriate for lunch. We had fun opening our goodie bags and it gave us a bit of evening exercise. I admire the concept of never wasting food, so we will tell you about it so you too can reduce food waste while having fun.