

AnyLeaf (YC S10) Aggregates And Delivers Personalized Grocery Store Deals - dirtae
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/anyleaf-aggregates-and-delivers-personalized-grocery-store-deals/

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jamesbritt
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?

~~~
dirtae
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.

~~~
jamesbritt
"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.

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jswinghammer
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!

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ig1
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.

~~~
jswinghammer
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.

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prawn
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?

~~~
elliottcarlson
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.

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

~~~
elliottcarlson
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.

~~~
prawn
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.

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crcarlson
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.

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

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kineticac
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.

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zacharyz
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.

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spulec
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.

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

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

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

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tocomment
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.

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hugh3
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...

~~~
elliottcarlson
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.

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aw3c2
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.

~~~
michaelcampbell
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.

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

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rgrieselhuber
Congrats guys! The site is gorgeous.

