Savvy grocery store apps

Toss that hand written shopping list that's crumpled in your purse or pocket. Scrap those coupons you clip, and if you're a serious shopper dump that calculator you whip out to figure out the best deal in the gro-cery aisle! We found shopping has gone high tech, and help with this chore can now be found, right in your smart phone!

Allison Barnes juggles her own business and a family. so when it comes to grocery shopping, she needs it to be fast, easy and economical.  Luckily for Allison, there's an app for that! 

"Grocery shopping is less of a pain," Allison said.

Allison enters her entire shopping list into the "Grocery I-Q" app, and she can also digitally "zap" it to her husband. The app organizes the list by store aisle, so items are easier to find-and it saves her list for future trips.

"I don't have to sit down with pen and paper at the beginning of the week and write down even the things we use all the time," Allison added.

We found a digital explosion of grocery shopping apps. There's so many, one challenge may be sorting through them and figuring out which ones suit your needs. If your goal is convenience: there's many apps for that!

Grocery Gadget, for example, which lets you take and send pictures of items so your spouse, doesn't buy the wrong thing! If your goal is saving money, there's apps that let you upload receipts and get rebates, like Receipt Hog. There's also apps that do "math" and comparison shopping for you, like "Apples 2 Oranges".

Other apps like "food planner" let you download recipes and ingredients are added to your shopping list. Food economist, Carolyn Dimitri, says they're tools for budgeting and eating well.

"Plan your whole menu and shopping list in advance and you can know exactly how much it costs," DiMitri said.

Big name chain stores also offer apps. The Walmart app lets you "price scan" items with your phone and if you can't find something in the store, just open the app, select the item and it shows which aisle its in. The Whole Foods app offers money saving info about in store sales.

"A lot of this is being driven by the millennial generation. They're becoming householders and taking charge, but they're also influencing their parents," according to Nancy Childs, PhD, Professor of Food Marketing.

Childs published this study about retail grocery store apps. Digital shoppers she surveyed say they use apps because of convenience, economics and personalization. But some complained some apps had  slow response times in the store and shoppers had concerns over  being hit up to take surveys and privacy.

"This privacy issue is not new. As they would say the horse left the barn. We're accustomed to sharing information to receive convenience, to receive access maybe to some economic discounts," Childs said.
 
Allison says she's not concerned about her privacy and the apps helped her save about 100 dollars last year! 
 
"That's a big deal to me it really helps and it's not a lot of effort on my part."

Other apps, like "Insta Cart," allow you to do your shopping right on your phone, select the items you want and have them delivered with a touch of a button.