Given that these prices are going into a database, I was hoping that you could click on an item and get its pricing over time (not a referral link to the Trade Joes web site).
FWIW cmoog, I think it is pretty cool. I've always felt that good surveillance on retail prices with specific product information (like weight/servings) would be a solid data set for economists and people like me to understand "real" inflation, "greed" inflation, and general product pricing trends.
I love the idea of pricing over time. It seems like things jump around in 50 cent increments quite a bit. Would be interesting to graph it. I wonder if you'd be able to gather enough data before TJ's decides to implement better endpoint security, though. Having tried to do something similar with airline website data, they sure can make it challenging.
The most appealing part of this hack is that the advertisers weren't the customer, they were the product. :-)
(I shop their stores, but I don't use their website at all.)