Appiphilia: Shopping made easier with iPhone app
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Carting around your iPhone could make grocery shopping less of a chore. (Photo credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times.)
I’m more of a coupon clipper than a list maker. I like to let the coupons take me where they will in a grocery store. But some prefer to have order to their shopping. I’m guessing L.A. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila is one of those people. She recently tried out the Grocery iQ app on her iPhone. You can read her whole take over on the Daily Dish blog, but here’s how it breaks down for her:
What it is: A digital grocery shopping list. The app incorporates search and predictive type, stores favorite items and shopping history and lets you create categories that match store aisles at your regular stops. It also lets you add details and notes.
What sizzles: Type the first few letters, and the program completes the word and adds it to your list in the appropriate ‘aisle.’ For example, if you type ‘cilantro’ and choose ‘bunch,’ the entry automatically goes into the ‘fruits-and-vegetables’ aisle. You can write in your brand names, move the aisles around or eliminate them and e-mail your list to someone else in the family who can do the shopping for you. A ready-made honey-do list!
What fizzles: Virbila didn’t offer any downsides. I am a little suspicious of the fact that the app was developed by Coupons Inc., which touts itself as ‘the leading U.S. provider of consumer-printed coupon marketing and technology solutions.’ I don’t like the idea of an app potentially giving a company the chance to keep track of what this consumer buys on a regular basis. But maybe privacy is overrated; we trade it for discounts from grocery-store club cards.
Bottom line: Virbila says the app makes her ‘kind of love putting my shopping list together.’ Personally, I’m not sure an app could truly make me utter the word ‘love’ in conjunction with putting the list together -- I’d lose some of my shopping serendipity. But I suppose it could make things a little less of a chore.
-- Michelle Maltais
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