Show HN: I built a free app for New Yorkers to save money on groceries

Show HN: I built a free app for New Yorkers to save money on groceries(sbnyc.app)

12 points by eli_yumnik 3 hours ago | 6 comments

I built this because I see that grocery savings are achievable in NYC. People usually just go to the store they're used to going to, and it's rarely worth the effort of combing through card cashback, weekly coupons, CPG rebates.

Most people leave real money on the table by not stacking them, and even more don't even know that these deals are out there.... so I built a way to automate it.

You can use it for free, no login, currently NYC-only with ~690 stores.

I built it so that you just search whatever you want (use commas if you want to search multiple items). Or - use the AI tool to help shop for you. If you're curious, it's powered by a trained LLama model.

Honest limitations are coverage and freshness. Id love some feedback on where the data looks wrong or is stale.

Question for the room - what to prioritize if you're working with messy, multi-source retail/pricing data? Is freshness or coverage the top priority if you cant get a uniform response from every source? curious on what to prioritize here.

alibrarydweller 1 hour ago |

I like where this is coming from but I'm afraid it's totally backwards. Apologies if coming off as unfriendly.

I picked a spot on the map and no store within 25 blocks in any direction has any deals. That's fine, and it's not the author's fault that they don't publish deals, but after that the next thing to do is to search for a particular thing. If you live at that point on the map, is the rational thing to then go to another borough to save a dollar on tofu?

I think most people look for grocery deals opportunistically and if it's not where they are then it's not interesting. The question isn't "where's the cheapest X", it's "what's cheap near Y".

I don't think there's a good way to do that either without sharing device location. I asked the bot "what's the best store near St. Patrick's Cathedral?" and it hadn't the faintest idea, even after multiple follow-ups.

mrwetsnow 1 hour ago |

FYI, your data has closed stores. For example, the Trader Joe's on 72nd and Broadway in NYC is currently closed (and has been for a month), but I am pointed there to get the cheapest milk (which was true when they were open) :)

jackconsidine 2 hours ago |

Near and dear to my heart. Would be very hard to add but there's a sensational operation called Mr. Mango (bet the OP has heard of them). Don't know how exactly they do it but Mr (Mango|Lime|Kiwi) sells fresh (often organic) produce at 30% market rate. Big case of strawberries for 99 cents type thing.

jimmydddd 1 hour ago |

Do NYC grocery stores publish pricing info in an easily accessible format?

loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago |

You could at least write the HN post yourself. Even that is slop.

JSR_FDED 2 hours ago | |

Honest feedback