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Comment by sach90 | Hacker News Reader

This is my site. I need to re-run a scrape and update the prices.

McDonald's blocked my scraper when it went viral the first time

Would it be possible to include Canada? food inflation has been massive over the last couple years.

Not for Big Macs, but if you’re interested I’ve been collecting Canadian grocery price data over the past couple of years here: https://grocerytracker.ca/

This is great! I would love something like this for Hong Kong. The prices here are very volatile due to special offers, etc.

Any plans to add other countries?

If I had unlimited time I would love to. Unfortunately I can’t see it expanding beyond Canada anytime soon though.

You should probably sort the store/city selector dropdown alphabetically.

Agreed on the stores. Cities/locations should be sorted by distance from your location.

Oh wow! I've been looking for something like this. Thank you.

Have you had any hassles from supermarket chains?

No, but I’ll admit that is my biggest hesitation in promoting it beyond what I already do. Walmart has the most aggressive blocking (in general, I don’t think specifically directed at my site) and I haven’t been able to get new data from them since October I think. Otherwise haven’t had any issues.

Big +1 to this. A medium fries at Canadian McDonald’s is now $5, it’s madness!

I got a 10 piece McNuggets meal the other day. Cost $15. Wild stuff.

Yeah, I used to stop at McDonald's on my way home from a big grocery run and stopped when I saw the fries there cost more than the giant bag of frozen fries I had just bought...

Wow. $2.74 CAD in the UK.

I feel they’ve shrunk too but ymmv.

Seemed to me the same size box, less fries. I was there recently.

AFAIK UK pricing is national?

Don't you have an identical site with Taco Bell prices?

I do - taconomical.com

+1 for https://taconomical.com/ Texas is really divided.

Could I interest you in listing any others you have?

I admire the crispness and precision of your mapping. Zooming in tight so just three or four McD locations are on screen and then sliding a location juuuust off-screen immediately changes the price results.

How old is the data?

Looks like most prices haven’t been updated since March 2023, so about 10 months old.

You should publish the dataset or provide an API to get it. I found what seems to be a dataset but it doesn't have a clear structure.

Is there a way you prevent them from identifying your scraper?

Yes, there is a lot written about it. Here is one link I have saved:

https://github.com/niespodd/browser-fingerprinting

Ah I was wondering where the info was from. Nice site.

Well done. Any personal findings?

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