Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

I remember my mother sitting on the living room floor on Sundays, spread out with the weekly circular in front of her, planning our family’s shopping list for the week.

“Woo hoo! Another deal! Special K–two for one this week!” she’d announce gloriously, while clipping out the coupon and adding it to the collection she carried around in a tattered envelope in her purse. “Woo hoo! Fifty cents off Quilted Northern!”

Flash forward 25 years, and here I am doing the very same thing…on my iPhone.

Yesterday, MyWebGrocer and ShopRite launched the very first weekly specials iPhone App. We’re all very excited about it here at MWG because it’s a product we all believe in and use personally.

Click on image below view a video demo of the App

The App is the latest incarnation of MyWebGrocer’s efforts to make ShopRite’s customers’ lives easier. It functions as a portable circular and invites consumers to “start saving” before they even arrive at the store by browsing hundreds of items instantly. Among its many groundbreaking features, ShopRite Weekly Specials enables consumers to see what’s on sale in real time at their regular ShopRite store. Once they select an item, it literally tumbles into their shopping list, which is neatly organized by category with pictures, descriptions and real time prices. The App syncs and downloads store specials directly to an iPhone or iPod Touch and can even sync with customers’ shopping lists at ShopRite.com.

At the gym this morning, while plugging along on an excercise bike, I put together a dinner menu for tomorrow night based on the current sale items at ShopRite . I planned the meal around what’s on sale, and I was able to stay within budget my because the App gave me a running total of my basket price. When I got to the office, I printed out a paper copy of my list, and I will stop at the store tonight and pick up my groceries after work. I saved myself time and money, all while burning calories on the bike! I felt so good I added a box of chololate cookies to my shopping list…hey! I’d earned it!

Our App doesn’t try to be “all things to all people…” and I like that. This App focuses on what I want to know: what’s on sale at my local store. It’s simple and efficient and it gets the job done.

Twenty-five years later, I am “clipping coupons” just like mom. As I click around on my iPhone, I can understand the excitement she felt there on the living room floor clipping for “deals.” And I’m doing it from the gym…bonus.

So I might as well just say it: I am turning into my mother. Woo-hoo!

-Alison