South Florida Grocery Chains Offer Shopping Apps

Need grocery coupons? A virtual shopping list? The ability to trace the origins of your food?

As with nearly everything else, there are now apps for that.

Local Florida grocery chains are rolling out store-specific smartphone applications to connect shoppers with the products they want at a price that’s right.

Several chains — including Publix, Winn-Dixie and Aldi — deliver weekly specials via free smartphone apps. But some apps offer a twist.

Earlier this year, Milam’s Market in Coconut Grove introduced Savvy Penny, a paperless coupon system, that allows shoppers to select coupons on electronic tablets stationed throughout the store.
With Savvy Penny, customers register for the program either online or in the store. When they see a “coupon’’ tag while shopping, they can plug in the last four digits of their phone number at one of the touch-pad stations in the store and select coupons for items they want.
At checkout, they re-enter the digits of their phone number on the touch-pad at the register, and the selected coupons automatically show up for the cashier.

"It’s easy,” said Raul Salazar, co-founder of Green Virtual Solutions, an environmentally conscious company that created Savvy Penny. “You don’t have to remember to cut the coupons, you don’t need a newspaper and you don’t forget to bring the coupons.”

Savvy Penny currently is offered at just one of Milam’s four stores, at 2969 McDonald Street, but it already has more than 4,000 registered users. Plans are under way to put Savvy Penny in Milam’s Sunny Isles location and expand the program to other grocery stores in Florida.
At Winn-Dixie Stores, a free app for iPhone and Android phones is updated each Wednesday with prices for new weekly specials, then allows users to easily create a virtual grocery list. Once they’ve compiled their list, they can use it to check off items as they shop, or email their list to family and friends.

“It’s just a way to make things easier for our guests,” said Hunter Robinson, communications specialist for Winn-Dixie. “It’s a digital word, and you have to do things to make life easier for your guests.’’
Like other grocers, Publix Supermarkets’ free app lets shoppers use their smartphones to find the latest deals. But it also includes some special features, including a store locator feature integrated with Google maps that offers directions and store hours.

For freshness-conscious foodies who have a passion for Ranier cherries, plums and honeydew melons, Publix’s app also sends “peak season’’ text alerts for seasonal produce, so shoppers can get it at its ripest and tastiest.

Some of the handiest grocery apps come from independent app makers. ShopSavvy, a free app in the iTunes and Android stores, lets consumers figure out which stores nearby have the cheapest price for items they buy. Shoppers can search before leaving home or scan a barcode in the store.

GroceryIQ, also free, integrates Coupons.com deals, but also has a feature to share the shopping list with other users. For the health-conscious, there are apps like Fooducate, which lists healthy alternatives after scanning a barcode.

And for shoppers wary about food safety after several high-profile food recalls, California-based HarvestMark allows consumers to use their phones to trace their produce, pinpointing exactly which farm grew it and providing a platform for consumers and farmers to interact with one another.

Farmers and distributors upload key information about their product to the free HarvestMark smartphone app, then put a unique HarvestMark barcode label on their product.
More than 3 billion packages have already been labeled with a HarvestMark barcode.

“There is a general trend of people wanting to know more about their food and more about where it came from,” said Scott Carr, president and CEO of YottaMark, the company that made HarvestMark. “We know that consumers prefer food that’s traceable.
South Florida farms, including Alpine Fresh and Southern Specialties, have registered their foods with HarvestMark and major national producers such as Driscoll’s are also on board.

The food-tracing app for iPhone and Android phones already has tens of thousands of users, according to Carr, and generally sees a spike in users amid food recalls when shoppers are trying to determine if their products are tainted. “It creates a connection that people enjoy when they go to the farmers market, but they feel it when they are in a produce aisle,” Carr said.

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