Grocery shopping made easier (and without killing a tree)

If you’re like me you’ve spent years grabbing random pieces of paper for your grocery lists. I don’t shop very often so lists invariably get buried somewhere in my purse, thrown out by accident or lost. I also don’t like to shop and being single means I really don’t have to often.

In the world of smartphones and environmentally friendly alternatives (or going green), I’ve discovered a handy little tool for my Droid called Grocery King. This app has proven to be a perfect alternative to paper lists.

The Grocery King was one of the very first apps I installed on my Droid. I’ve installed about 300 more for different uses since then. Out of the roughly 300, I maintain around 200 and consider the Grocery King near the top of my list of keepers.

This app is so useful because:

1. Items can be easily added to the list and referred to.
2. Common grocery items already exist and are grouped according to the aisle they would typically be in for most grocery stores.
3. I can mark items as favorites and enter my own items either manually or via barcode scan. For all items I can indicate quantity, add price, tax, coupon information and more.
4. As I load items into my cart I can easily check them off the list.
5. If I want to, I can establish a budget and not allow my list to exceed it. This is not only personally useful, it could come in quite handy for party or other event planning that requires spending a certain amount.
6. I can share my shopping list with anyone via email.
7. I can scan all of my shopping reward cards into my phone and during checkout, the cashier can scan the card information directly from my phone.

While I’ve managed to master an alternative for my grocery lists, I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to paper or plastic during checkout. I too often forget to bring my cloth bags into the store when I go shopping.

More screen shots:

Related posts:

1. Organizing the smartphone “desktop”
2. What did I do before the smartphone?

Tags: app, droid, grocery shopping, motorola droid, shopping, smartphone

This entry was posted on February 7, 2010 at 1:16 am and is filed under Wireless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.