I don't envision anyone doing their "meal planning" at the grocery store because they have to resolve the ingredient list with what they have at home.
But seriously, ditch the real time sharing stuff. I don't know why so many todo lists focus on that.
My guess is that it is and I have anecdotal evidence to support it! :)
But in relation to the scenario you mentioned of picking up an item on the way home while your partner was at Whole Foods, yes, a simple SMS saying "I'm picking up cheese, is that cool?" just works.
If what you meant by that scenario is that there are many people who co-habitate and frequently and simultaneously do grocery shopping at different stores, then I can't really comment on that.
And yes, also agree - recipes, mixing with what you've got at home vs at the store - good idea. Additionally, just recipe suggestions based on scanning an item. If I scanned pears and salmon, having a mobile app suggest 5 other things to buy that would make a great <whatever> (I'm not a cook - I can't think of what I might cook with that) - that would help clueless people like me do 'real time recipe discovery' when I'm at the store. Thinking I'll do this somewhere else, build up a 'list', then share it or look it up when I'm near a store - for me, no dice.
Perhaps that's where grocery list apps all plan to go, but I'm not sure why they don't start on that end first. Or perhaps some have, and my discovery on this is so bad I've never found one.
EDIT: From TFA
"AnyList also sports a smart recipe system that culls ingredient lists from huge recipe depositories (think Allrecipes, Epicurious, and the like) to blogs "
Does it show you recipes based on something you scan though? That wasn't clear...
Me neither.
> Does it show you recipes based on something you scan though? That wasn't clear...
My guess is no else that'd be highlighted. But start there, not at the "list".
It's a common scenario for me and my wife to share a list and update it real-time as we traverse the store. We might split up and pick up different things, or I might be at the store while she's at home and remember something when I'm already out. Real-time sharing allows us to communicate accurately through the list.
What we don't do is any recipe management. We know what we make, we don't cook extravagant meals requiring more than 3 or 4 components, so we think about what we like, we pick it up, and we mix & match when we get home. E.g., we have chicken, pasta, ground beef, a variety of sauces, some miscellaneous vegetables and do different combinations depending on who's cooking and how the cook feels that day.
Playing devil's advocate here but can you effectively be wandering the grocery store looking for item X at the same time as your wife is looking for item Y while she remembers that you should get Z instead of X and update the list in a manner which you'd be notified?
I can't imagine that's common enough to warrant a real time todo list app but the scenario I'm familiar with is different from yours so I might be wrong.
You have to ask, is SMS good enough?
> What we don't do is any recipe management.
Valid point.
I can't imagine that's common enough to warrant a real time todo list app but the scenario I'm familiar with is different from yours so I might be wrong.
You have to ask, is SMS good enough?
SMS is definitely good enough, but it's a nice-to-have to keep everything on the same list. That way when we meet up again we can scan the list and know everything's there.
As for your scenario, yes, and it has happened. I'll be wandering the store, refresh the list and notice new things on the list. We currently use Cozi and while it isn't the best application ever it definitely gets the job done, and it's free.
I might actually have to try this out with my wife. We normally walk the isle together when we tag team the shopping. Pretty inefficient once I think about it.
I think what you're missing here is THE TRACTION. They have 10s of thousands of users already, and they are using the app, as explained in the article. I would imagine the team has enough analytics in there to know what features people are using, and talks to their customers to understand the analytics better.
What's the reason for your suggestion? What you envision? Or what people actually do with an app based on thousands of users? I would guess the Anylist guys use the latter.
I can only make suggestions based on my experiences and the problems I see. If they have data to prove otherwise then by all means discard my suggestions ... I don't take it personally :).
I give suggestions but there's very low value in making it easier for me to provide suggestions. Her side of the equation is where the real work is and it's where you can do a ton of optimizations and have a loyal user.
Making her trips to the grocery store easier > the incremental value she gets from my collaboration.
Enough of the suggestions though. You've thought about this more than I and my only data point is my wife. Congrats on the launch and I'll tell my wife about the app.
That's valuable info.
Because it gives bleeding-edgers something to cultivate nodejs/etc. presence on their resumes.