A dairy farmer has launched a free app that lets shoppers check their online grocery list to see which local supermarket is the cheapest on the day.
Amy Williams of RNZ
CheckMyTrolley is the latest grocery comparison tool to hit the market as the cost of living continues to bite into household budgets.
Will Duff said people are surprised to learn he's behind a new food price-checking app when he tells them what he does for a day job.
"People get thrown back quite a bit when I say I'm a dairy farmer and I'm not an IT person, but I am the person behind the idea."
He works at a dairy farm on the Taiere plain near Dunedin.
After returning from a decade working in Australia, he found grocery prices had become a pinch-point for most and tested his theory in a social media post that received more than 100,000 views.
People agreed supermarket shopping had become a part-time job if they wanted to check for the best prices.
"To me, that was pretty simple to go, right, this is a problem in New Zealand and I think building this app is going to actually make a huge difference for New Zealanders to save money."
Duff took his idea to a developer and CheckMyTrolley launched a few months ago on Apple devices with android coming soon. It allows shoppers to create an online list and check which supermarket is the cheapest.
"If I can help New Zealanders, I guess that's my drive, that's what I'm hoping to get is to be like, look, someone's created this app that helps New Zealanders, saves money, well, hopefully saves a little bit of money for you. And I guess that's a success for me."
He saved $148 using the app in one month.
"It's easier to compare over those prices and be like, right, I'm definitely not shopping there because that's too expensive. I guess everyone feels it in New Zealand."
CheckMyTrolley is the latest grocery comparison app to launch, joining Grocer and Grosave, each with different features.
Both have roughly 70,000 users.
Consumer NZ researchers recently analysed the online prices of a basket of 16 everyday grocery items, across eight weeks and four cities, to find New Zealand's cheapest supermarket. Pak'n Save came out top.
Stacks supermarket opened just a couple of weeks ago in Auckland's Sylvia Park, New Zealand's largest mall. (Source: 1News)
Consumer's head of research and advocacy Gemma Rasmussen said people prefer to shop online to stick to their budgets.
"It means that they can really stick to a list and purchase just that, whereas sometimes when you go into the store you might deviate a little bit," she said.
"Being able to compare your whole shop online can lead to some pretty significant savings."
A recent Consumer NZ survey shows the cost of groceries is a top financial concern for households, a change from five years ago when it ranked below rent and power.
"We are seeing a massive swing towards buying the private label brands with shoppers they're just trying to make any way they can to purchase their food as cheaply as possible."
Grocer is still a hobby project, according to its developer Roc Wong, a software engineer.
He started the price comparison app five years ago.
"I started this as a side hockey project to collect the price data points from the supermarkets, website apps, and help myself do a bit of comparison."
And so far the data has been interesting, some pricing patterns have emerged.
"I have this observation also backed by the data I've collected so far, a lot of products' prices have a high-low pattern," he said with one week being high and the next low.
"This is very common for processed goods like ice cream, chocolate, whereas the fresh produce is more bound to the season."
Wong said the supermarkets have not expressed any concern about the app or data scraped for it.
Dunedin student Lara Bishell uses the CheckMyTrolley app to compare prices and said over the last month she has saved $100.
"I'm on the app just to save some money because I don't eat meat and plant based foods can be expensive," she said.
"It was interesting because I thought Pak'nSave was the cheapest but when I was looking it was telling me Woolworths or New World."
Bishell said a brand of tofu she buys is $3 cheaper at one supermarket.
"It feels good because I try to be frugal and save. It makes me feel less stressed about money and supermarket shopping."
Christchurch-based software developer Tim Hong co-founded the grocery price-comparison app Grosave in April last year, with Murray Wong and Jayon Thomas.
"There's this huge transparency issue for pricing that's why we did this first but as we expand this we want to make sure people have a healthy and affordable diet, that's our vision."
Hong said they plan to soon add a function to enable users to buy online, from the app, clicking through to the supermarket's cart.
As for scraping supermarkets' data, he said Foodstuffs and Woolworths are yet to get in contact.
"We don't want to cause any trouble to their service. The data is publicly available so I think it's fine we haven't heard anything from the big players."
Hong said their data shows people using Grosave save an average 13% each shop, which for a $250 weekly spend saves them just over $1000 a year.
SHARE ME