3 On Your Side: Grocery Shopping Apps
By Jim Donovan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Toss that hand written shopping list, scrap the coupons and dump the calculator that you use to figure out the best deal. Grocery shopping has gone high tech. 3 On Your Side Consumer Reporter Jim Donovan finds that more and more these days, all you need to bring to the supermarket is your smart phone.
When it comes to grocery shopping, Allison Barnes needs it to be fast, easy and economical. Luckily for her there are apps for that. She enters her entire shopping list into the "Grocery iQ" app, and she can also digitally zap it to her husband. The app organizes the list by store aisle and saves her list for future trips. Barnes says, "I don't have to sit down with pen and paper at the beginning of the week and write down even the things we use all the time."
With so many grocery shopping apps, the challenge may be: figuring out which ones suit your needs. Food Economist Carolyn Dimitri says, "It depends upon how much time you have to spend, and really probably most importantly what your goals are."
The "Grocery Gadget" app lets you take and send pictures of items - so your spouse, doesn't buy the wrong thing.
There are apps that do math and comparison shopping for you, like "Apples 2 Oranges".
Apps like "Food Planner" let you download recipes and ingredients are added to your shopping list. They're tools for budgeting and eating well. Dimitri says, "Plan your whole menu and shopping list in advance and you can know exactly how much it costs."
The Wal-Mart app lets you price scan items with your phone and if you can't find something in the store just open the app, select the item, and it shows which aisle it's in. While the Whole Foods app offers money saving info about in store sales.
The popularity of shopping apps are being driven by millennials, and now their parents are also jumping on board, although some complain that some grocery apps have slow response times in the stores.
For more information visit the following links:
http://www.grocerygadgets.com/Gadgets/grocery-gadget.aspx
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apples2oranges-price-comparison/id458078866?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/walmart/id338137227
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/apps
