New website helps Kiwi shoppers compare prices across major supermarkets

Saturday, 16 April 2022

The Grocer website allows users to compare prices across the country’s three major supermarkets.

A free website has been launched that allows users to compare grocery prices across New Zealand’s three major supermarkets.

Web developer Roc Wong, 37, has been working on the Grocer app since January.

The site displays current prices for every item at Countdown, New World and Pak ‘n Save branches nationwide. Prices are updated daily.

Commerce Commission chairwoman Anna Rawlings and commissioner John Small insist proposed supermarket industry reforms will make a difference, even though they are making no promises they will lead to a third entrant.

The site allows users to select their preferred supermarkets and compare prices of items by either scanning barcodes or searching for products by name.

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The Grocer app then collates a list, where price comparisons across the major supermarkets can be found per item or as a total shopping cost.

Roc Wong was inspired by increased living costs to develop Grocer – an app that allows users to compare grocery costs across a range of major supermarket stores.

One feature Wong said he wanted to incorporate was the app’s ability to make a shopping “plan” based on whether the user wants to shop at one store, or make multiple trips in order to find the lowest total cost.

The website is free right now, and Wong hopes to keep it that way.

“If I find feedback is pretty good I’ll probably keep it going. As long as I can [justify] the time and cost.”

As for the development of the site itself, Wong said the most difficult aspect was having all the price data available on the site, in a simple enough way that prices remain current.

He said he ultimately got the data directly from the supermarket websites and uses that.

It is something he said he was told “may be a legal issue, and they might force me to shut it down” but that he said other websites had done similar things in the past, so he hoped it would not be an issue.

Wong was inspired by increasing grocery costs to develop the app.

“Given the grocery prices and [the rising] cost of living, I personally feel it’s hard to keep the cost down and manageable,” he said.

According to Stats NZ, annual food prices in New Zealand have increased by 5.9 per cent from January 2021 to January 2022 – the highest increase in more than a decade.

Since launching the site yesterday and posting about Grocer to social media, Wong said he is averaging about 200 to 300 active users per half hour.

“It’s overwhelming,” Wong said.

“There [have been] a lot of positive comments.”