Facebook Plunges Again
Tumblr 101: Tips And Tricks To Get Started
Grocery Shopping Helper
I suck at shopping for groceries. I don't mean a little bit, I mean a lot. When I head to the local store for bread, milk, cheese, and a couple other things, I come back 3 hours later and feel like I lived through the Blair Witch Project in real life. It's that feeling of being completely lost, all the time that does it. I don't know what it is, but I can never remember the layout sufficiently between one trip and the next to really make any kind of efficient trip to the grocery store.
Well apparently I'm not the only grocery-impaired person in the world. Dave Cheong is a software developer that had the same issues as I do with shopping (although probably not quite as extreme as me), so he decided to do something about it. Dave wrote Grocery Shopping Helper. While the name doesn't sound all that interesting, the concept is really clever, and it's sure to actually speed up your shopping trips.
This is how it works, described by Dave himself:
- Start by making a list of the items you are interested in. Not just the items for this week (like a conventional shopping list), but for ALL the items you are, might be or used to be interested in.
- Just for the very first time, go to the store and note down all the aisle numbers against every item you have on your list. Your supermarket customer service might already have a list defined, so ask them first.
- Come back to this site and enter each item into the text area below (separate the description from the aisle with a comma).
- Generate a report alphabetically by clicking the 'Generate' button. Print it in landscape and stick it on your fridge for future reference. This is a convenient lookup index which you can use to find the aisle by the item description. You only need one of this.
- Click the browser's back button. Select the "Sort by aisle" checkbox. Generate a report by aisle and print it in landscape. Unlike the previous report, you should print as many copies of this as possible. You will need one of this every time you go to the grocery store.
- At the start of each week, get a fresh aisle report and stick it on your fridge.
- Each time you run out of something, say milk, place a mark in your aisle report next to the item indicating the quantity you need. You can use the alphabetical report to look up the aisle number.
- Take each weekly aisle report when you go to the shops. Simply walk from one end to the other end of the store (ie from the first to the last aisle) and pick up the items with marks alongside as you go past them.
Comments
10
Subscribe to commentsJeff HobbsAug 17th 2006 12:38PM
Looks cool. There is a great little app for PalmOS that does this kind of thing:
http://www.ggaub.com/hs/
~jeff
tankAug 17th 2006 12:58PM
Jeff, I was thinking the same thing. If you have a Palm or Pocket PC, Handyshopper is a much more elegant solution. It saves me a cool 30 minutes every time I go to the supermarket.
ScottAug 17th 2006 1:21PM
The key to making either of these apps into an easy-to-use, widely-adopted solution is the implementation of a public database of store layouts. Most large grocery store chains already have a published aisle map, and I'd wager the layout in most locations of a given chain is similar, if not identical. So, if you live near an Acme you'd go to the Layout Database, download the Acme Layout file, import it and head to the store. Also, if you move, you don't have to drive 45 mins to the store so you diligently mapped.
Dave CheongAug 17th 2006 5:06PM
Hi Jason,
I just wanted to drop a line to say thank you for your write up and good luck with your grocery shopping! You should definitely give it a try. If it works, drop me a line.
cheers,
dave
Jason ClarkeAug 17th 2006 5:19PM
Thanks Dave, I'll make sure to do that. Most often my wife does the shopping, but next time I'm in charge of it, I'll give this a try.
KeithAug 17th 2006 6:33PM
Clever, but incomplete. Unfortunately, my family's needs are mixed, and we rarely shop at only one store. In fact, a single weekly shopping run might hit as many as five different stores. And sadly, each one has a different aisle layout. I think this is true for most people -- both high-end shoppers that are particular about getting their produce from one place, meat/fish from another, etc., AND budget shoppers who are willing to hop among a few different chains based on who's got what on sale that week.
I'd like to see one extra dimension to something like this so I could get an aisle report by store. That would make this more useful for a wider audience.
EricAug 17th 2006 9:59PM
Use Paper and some free photocopies from work...
Simple System, less work:
Organize your regular items on a paper in roughly the layout of the store. Photocopy this and when you need bread, or milk that week you circle bread or milk. Anything else you need that isn't on the list you write it in below or above one of your regular items, since you actually know about where that item is in the store. This way you don't have as much setup work and you don't have to log onto your computer everyweek to go to the store.
Textbook CaseAug 18th 2006 4:09AM
Holy moly, grocery shopping is some of the little exercise I actually get, and part of the fun is the inspiration of seeing something new you might want. How do I know I wanted Gyros before I see them?
If I realy need some things I write them down first, but even in the biggest stores how hard is it to find stuff? Locations do change occasionally, too, so how often are you auditing your process? I'd rather leave work at work.
The idea's not bad, but the thought of actually writing aisle numbers down and then typing them into a website for later, at all the grocery stores I normally use, sounds like zero fun.
If you do it and it works, kudos. I guess I just like grocery shopping enough that charting the most efficient route isn't at the top of my list.
Shep EddyAug 18th 2006 2:57PM
Thumbs up to Handy Shopper for the Palm.
I've used it for years. It is actually a nice database program and I've created a number of lists that I use. In addition to shopping lists I also have packing lists. Before a trip, I pull out the Palm and click off the clothes I'll need for the trip. Then I pack according to the list. Because I follow the list, I pack fewer clothes. I've also go TV episode list and check off the episodes as I watch them.
richAug 24th 2006 12:38PM
i like the fact that you don't need to enter which items you need into the computer each week... you just bring the list. it's less powerful that way in the long run but more likely that people will actually use the system.
what i need is a way to enter all the meals that i make (with ingredients) and just click on which ones i want that week and have the list of what i need printed out for me by aisle. i then start in my kitchen and cross off what i already have and take the list to the store. are there any programs that do that?
in response to #9, do you also have a list of daily activities, like brushing your teeth, that you check off as you do them?? ...take a shower... check.