AnyLeaf (YC S10) Aggregates And Delivers Personalized Grocery Store Deals | Hacker News Reader

AnyLeaf (YC S10) Aggregates And Delivers Personalized Grocery Store Deals

techcrunch.com

88 pointsdirtae27 comments

The site wants an E-mail address before showing me anything in my area. Then, after I provide that, I'm told the service isn't even available for my zip code. Now I feel like I've been tricked. Why not allow people to see sample sale items in a given zip code, and let users know if the site even serves their area before asking them to provide an E-mail address?

If we don't have data for your area, then we don't send you email.

We experimented with a multi-step sign up process where we first prompted for a zipcode, then prompted for an email address (letting you know at that step whether we had data for your zipcode), but a multi-step sign up process felt too heavyweight given that we really only need two pieces of information to create an account.

We will consider showing people sample items for a given zipcode based on feedback.

"We will consider showing people sample items for a given zipcode based on feedback."

That's what I was looking for when I first went to the site; it didn't occur to me that I could only see local sales items by E-mail.

If I find a site that offers useful info, but I have to keep going back to get that info, then an E-mail sub looks quite inviting. But if the only way to see if this is going to be useful is to first sign up, I'm much less motivated.

Anyway, nice job, hope you do well with this.

I am both encouraged and discouraged by this. I am building something sort of like it.

On one hand it validates the idea a bit and on the other someone beat me to the punch.

Good luck guys!

MySupermarket built something similar in the UK (they've been around for 4 years and have around $20m in VC financing), so the idea probably doesn't need much more in the way of validation.

Mygrocerydeals.com exists here but it's kinda bad. I have a take on it that's fairly different so we'll see how it goes for me.

They are still localized - no one has beat you to the punch - yet. Make it and make it better if you can.

On the other hand, I am actually working on something similar as well, however I have already been aggregating nationwide data for far too many stores. It's time for me to remember the MVP mantra and get it done.

Direct link to AnyLeaf: http://www.anyleaf.com/

Doesn't reveal much for those who are not members. Might benefit from some "here's what it looks like" screenshots or did that test poorly?

Where does the data come from? Scraped from websites, provided by the stores, or scanned from physical catalogues?

You can go to http://www.anyleaf.com/grocery-deals and it will give you a good idea of how it works. Use the categories or the stores on the right to narrow things down as well.

They are either screen scraping or have a deal with one of the few major circular systems that are out there. MyWebGrocer has specific terms of service disallowing you to scrape and use the content for example - they also make use of proper robots.txt to prevent (polite) bots. So in terms of Raley's they must have a deal set up... or at least they should.

Excuse my ignorance, but what's a "circular system" in this case?

I am willing to take full blame for this confusion - I didn't know how else to coin these systems.

MyWebGrocer, ShopLocal and one other that escapes me at the moment, are companies that provide Circular (weekly specials that are sent to homes either as inserts with-in newspapers or in special ad bundles) information on the web. From what I can tell there are some exclusivity in between grocery chains and the company that provides online Circular information.

I hope I explained it a little better this time.

OK, that was my guess though they aren't called that here in AU.

Wonder if the companies cover costs for the chains in exchange for info that they can use in other ways?

Grocery specials and inserts in Australia are nearly always by the stores themselves rather than aggregated. We don't really have grocery coupons either.

Congratulations guys! I like the redesign. I check the site for deals every weekend before doing the weekly shopping and always find at least one good deal. (I am still looking forward to seeing the expansion to Whole foods :)

I am sure you already know this, but https for the passwords would be nice to see when you have a few min to look into it.

Just found NY strips for tonight via AnyLeaf! Thanks - and congratulations on your launch!

wow this is great!! congratz guys for the launch. I already spent a good amount of time on the site. Looks so perpetually useful, much more than things like Groupons which only work once in awhile.

Quick someone - find a way to do this with social deals sites. Filter out the daily spa deals and provide deals that match my interests from all the various groupon clones.

A bit like that comic strip "funny today or not" aggregator.

http://www.isitfunnytoday.com/

Yipit.com aggregates Groupon, LivingSocial, and hundreds of other daily deal sites(including non-location specific ones like Woot). It will filter the deals based on your location and specific interests you have.

Disclosure: I recently started working for Yipit.

Very nice, I had heard of the site but never tried it out. Do you guys manually aggregate everything?

Originally it was all done manually, but we've been automating more and more.

Feel free to send me any feedback. steve@yipit.com

How do they get the deals from the stores? I thought stores like ruses don't want aggregators. I imagine screen scraping would be almost impossible.

Why wouldn't the stores like aggregators?

Sure, they'd probably prefer it if you religiously looked through their catalogue every week. But if having an aggregator means that their 79-cents-per-pound special on spinach can drag a bunch of extra customers (including folks who aren't usually coupon-clippers) into the store then why not?

The danger would seem to be that it makes it too easy for people to wander around to a bunch of supermarkets to do their shopping, buying only the stuff that's super-discounted at each store. But I don't think anybody really shops like that -- it's too much effort. One good bargain at a below-cost price is enough to drag someone in through the doors of your supermarket rather than anyone else's, and while they're there they might as well buy a few other things they need...

There are sites that take care of the circulars for the stores. Some of these providers do not allow aggregation of the data and specifically require deals to be made in terms of advertising etc.

This makes me really sad. Food is one of the most important things you buy for your health. You should not go for cheap prices but for quality instead. How good can 0.99$ meat be? It will be full of hormons, antibiotics and other harmful things. It will be made in a way that harms environment.

Yes and no; people who are going to buy based on price only are doing that already. Likewise, those quality based shoppers probably aren't going to stop buying quality because of a company such as this. As any reputable consumer advocate would tell you, don't use deals like these to buy anything you normally wouldn't; use them to save money on the things you'd buy anyway.

Congrats Trip-Js! Love seeing the historical lows/highs of groceries.

Congrats guys! The site is gorgeous.

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