Every time I leave a grocery store I jam into my wallet a few coupons that the clerk at checkout hands out with the receipt. Some of them are good, some are not, but I rarely use any. To do so I would have to organize them and this can be a boring and time consuming task.
The team at MyGroceryDeals aims at taking the boredom out of your coupon clipping. It is an online database for grocery coupons from stores like Jewel Osco, Kroger and Cub Foods. You can search coupons, browse them by store and category, or simply make a shopping list and the website will pick matching coupons for you.
In addition you can check the dietary and nutrition information for each of the products or set an alert for substances you are allergic to (this feature is under development) and the website will warn you if you try to add a product to your list that has allergens matching your alert criteria.
This is a huge step forward compared to the old-fashioned coupon clipping however it is not quite there yet so I could use the website for my weekend shopping when I buy grocery in bulk. There are two reasons:
- One of the smaller stores I regularly use is not in the database. This is expected. With limited resources the team has to pick which stores to include first, and the bigger, more popular chains are given a priority.
- The user interface is slow and not very well suited for buying things in volume. For example I would like to be able to sort the coupons by discount, browse single store groceries by category, or narrow my grocery search to a single store.
Still if you just need to check if orange juice at your local Jewel Osco is on sale, or if 12-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale (my favorite :-)) goes for $11.99 instead of the usual $14.99 then MyGroceryDeals does the job just fine.
According to Ed Hladkowicz, a vice president at MyGroceryDeals, the team updates the data daily and covers over 4000 stores nationwide, so there is a good chance you will find most of your favorite stores in there.
I was somewhat surprised by the fact that MyGroceryDeals appears to be not affiliated with the coupon providers. On one hand it is good since it guarantees the team will not favor any particular store or brand. On the other hand it raises the question of how viable the business is. By my estimate advertisement and research don’t bring nearly enough revenue to cover the website maintenance.
Conclusion
I like the idea of centralized database for grocery coupons. It is very useful if you plan a short shopping trip and need to decide between two competing stores. The user interface is kind of 90’s and lacks certain important features which makes it hard to use for multiple items.
On a side note, for occasional coupon clipping, you might also want to check how Google solves the problem using their maps software.
Have you used MyGroceryDeals or another similar service? Tell us about it in your comments!
