One of my many hobbies/addictions is saving money on the web. I love to hunt for the ultimate deal by using price comparisons, coupon codes, cashback options, etc. I have had these tools at my disposal for at least 10 years now and have saved thousands of dollars, yet I still make some purchases in physical stores. Grocery shopping, although attempted as a web service years ago with Peapod, is not available here in Houston so I venture out to my local Kroger, Randalls or HEB at least once a week. Until now, these trips to the supermarket meant I had to leave the technology behind and earn my savings the old-fashion way (printed coupons). Thanks to Grocery IQ, that is all about to change.
Grocery IQ is a FREE application (originally priced at $4.99) for smartphone users and is currently available for iPhone and Android owners. The tool, powered by coupons.com, was designed to help users with a number of typical grocery shopping activities (listed below):
Create Grocery Lists
iPhone List
Create a simple, itemized list of everything you need to pick up at the store. Enter items via keyboard, voice command or barcode scanner and be as generic or specific as you would like. For instance, I need milk, but I don’t buy a specific brand, so I simply type in “milk” and there it is on the list. On the other hand, if I want to buy specific sodas, I can enter in “Diet Dr. Pepper” and choose that very specific item (2-liter, 12-pack, case, etc.) from the Grocery IQ database.
iPhone Barcode Scan
The single best thing about this product is the ability to use the barcode scanner that is built into every iPhone and Android phone to add items to the list. That’s right, in case you were not aware, the camera on your smartphone doubles as a barcode scanner (minus the red laser shooting out of the lens). All you have to do is hold the camera still over the barcode for a couple of seconds and the phone picks up the barcode. From there, you are presented with a match or prompted if the barcode is not in the database. So far, I have only come across one item that did not show up in their database.
So, grab your phone and head to the kitchen. Scan all the items that you need to buy at the store and type in any that you can’t scan. It literally takes just a couple of minutes.
Organize Lists
Android List
Scanning and typing all of your grocery items into the application is just the beginning. You can create lists for different grocery stores (in case you split up shopping by products), add item details and even organize your items by aisles. You’ll never have to head back to the other end of the store again, since your list will be organized in the same way you shop.
My favorite part of the organization is favorites. If you have a few items that you buy every single time you go to the store, you can simply add them to the favorites section and you’ll never have to add them again.
In the future, I would love to see individual stores work with this application to do the organizing and research pricing for you. In a perfect world, I would simply scan in the barcodes of items I needed and the list would populate, in order with pricing and comparisons to other stores. While they are at it, they can go ahead and have my groceries waiting for me when I arrive or deliver them, for a fee.
Share Your List
Do you share the grocery shopping with another household member? Maybe you take turns going to the store? Grocery IQ allows you to synchronize lists among users of the application or simply email a copy of the list to someone else. Either way, the details are there and you can rest assured that your “significant other” won’t come home without the most important item on the list or (worse) the wrong item entirely.
Coupons On-the-Go
Android Coupons
Since Grocery IQ is powered by Coupons.com, they have made coupon clipping a part of the application. Search the online list of coupons available from Coupons.com and “clip them” for use at the store. iPhone users can even print the coupons they find directly from the application, to an HP printer.
For a small segment of Grocery IQ users, the true tech comes into play. Safeway shoppers (which includes Randalls here in Houston, TX) can actually download coupons to their “Savings Card” from within the application and use them at checkout without ever printing them off. The Safeway Coupon Link program is actually available from several other partners, including shortcuts.com, cellfire and P&GeSAVER. Can you imagine saving money by simply surfing the web and saving coupons to the card that you already use at the store? Amazing.
My only issue with the Grocery IQ program so far is the lack of “coupon linking.” By this, I mean that the application should search my list and find digital coupons that match the item descriptions. Take this a step further and add a function that allows me to scan items as I put them in the cart. Grocery IQ would then search the web and save any corresponding coupons to my “savings card” while I shopped. The technology is there and I would be willing to pay for that application.
Bonus for Android Users
Wanna see something really cool? That same barcode scanning technology that we mentioned in the Lists section above can be used to install the Grocery IQ application itself. Simply open up the app called Barcode Scanner and scan this image (barcode shown below) to point your phone at the application install page. Yes, you can even scan images on a computer screen.
Tags: Android, barcode, cellfire, Coupons, groceries, grocery, grocery iq, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, P&GeSAVER, randalls, safeway, savings card, scanner, Shopping, shortcuts.com, smartphone, supermarket
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