Take Another Step Toward Lowering Your Grocery Bill

Are you looking to save money on your grocery bill? Who isn't? (Photo by qmnonic on flickr)

by Laura Weisskopf Bleill

Confession: I am — and always will be — a grocery store snob. When I first moved here, I lamented the fact that to get everything I wanted — and let’s face it, I never can get everything I want because some products I was used to are just not sold in this area — I had to go to at least three stores.

Flash forward to today. As a busy working mom, I simply don’t have the time to run around to every store to find the exact brand of hummus I want. And I’m much more price conscious than I used to be, going from my swingin’ single days to the DINK days to now the family of four days. So now I’m more apt to balance my desire to get every item I want – at the store that offers the best value.

Enter the new Web site, SavingEveryWeek.com. Built by Jeff Roloff, a self-described techie and cheapskate who lives in Urbana, savingeveryweek.com is devoted to helping consumers find their favorite products at the lowest price on a weekly basis. Roloff has launched the site locally as a pilot, but hopes to eventually expand it to other markets.

“I either go shopping at Schnuck’s or Walmart. It surprised me that often times Schnuck’s is cheaper than Walmart,” said Roloff, whose wife does most of the cooking while he does most of the shopping. “It is almost always a product that is on sale, and it’s often not advertised (in the weekly circular). Usually it’s some kind of a promotional period sale.”

So he thought, it would be nice if someone could aggregate the information in one place of how much a product costs at each store. So he quit his job and is devoting his full-time attention to making savingeveryweek.com more user-friendly and effective.

To get the most out of the site, it does require some manipulation on the part of the consumer. It asks you to enter the products you typically or occasionally buy. I tried it out, entering deli turkey, eggs, our favorite cracker brand, milk, bananas and avocados. You have to include information such as size or amount.

After entering the information, the site will show you if it knows the price of the items at various local stores, or if an item is on sale. The idea behind savingeveryweek.com isn’t to send people to five different stores to do their shopping, but to help consumers be more price-savvy when deciding where to shop.

You can also compare prices of the items you entered between certain stores, such as Schnuck’s against Walmart. It also sends out a weekly email with known sale prices of your desired items and, if there is an electronic coupon available for an item, it will be sent as a link.

“An important thing to remember is if you don’t have anything in the shopping list, you won’t get an email,” Roloff said.

How do you organize your grocery shopping? Do you shop at a favorite store or wherever has the best prices?

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