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Price comparison app helps consumers control cost of weekly grocery shop

New Innovator: SavvySpender lets users create a shopping list, calculate the cost and then compare prices across supermarkets

SavvySpender helps users plan their weekly grocery shop to maximise savings.

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Olive Keogh
Thu Mar 7 2024 - 05:30

One of the places consumers feel the pain of inflation most acutely is in their grocery bills. A few cent here and there may not look much in isolation but when all those increases are added together, the cost of the weekly shop is constantly going up.

Creeping price hikes make it difficult to budget and this inspired former American Express executive, Stephen Harvey, to develop SavvySpender, an app that helps users plan their weekly shop to maximise savings.

“With SavvySpender, users can create a shopping list and compare the price of an item, or their whole list, across Dunnes, Tesco, SuperValu and Aldi. Being able to see the cost of a shop in advance makes it much easier for people to stick to a budget,” Harvey says. (Lidl don’t publish prices currently, so they’re not included.)

Harvey is a UCD commerce graduate with a postgrad in marketing from the Smurfit School. In 2007 he moved to Sydney where he joined American Express. He subsequently spent 11 years with the company before returning to Ireland at the end of 2018.

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He initially worked as a business consultant to start-ups before joining AIB where he spent three years as a manager in payments strategy.

Harvey moved back to his home county of Donegal in 2022 and worked remotely for AIB from there before going full-time into developing the SavvySpender app. Based in the Inishowen innovation centre in Buncrana, he has put the app together on a bootstrapped budget of about €20,000, with support from LEO North Donegal and the New Frontiers programme at Atlantic Technology University, Sligo.

Shopping list apps have been around for a while and supermarkets also have bespoke apps for customers. However, Harvey says they don’t go far enough.

“I felt a more joined-up approach was needed and with SavvySpender a user can create a shopping list, calculate the cost and then compare prices across supermarkets in one go.

Users can compare the price of an item, or their whole list, across Dunnes, Tesco, SuperValu and Aldi

—  Stephen Harvey of SavvySpender

“It also allows them to check nutritional values and to click on an item to view a product. This is very helpful if someone else has made the list and you’re doing the shopping and want to be sure you’re getting the right thing.” (Music to the ears of those who’ve had a telling-off for going home with the wrong item.)

The app is free to use for now with a premium subscription to come. Likely users will fall into three categories: those balancing a budget, students and thrifty shoppers who like to get good value for their money.

The app will be launched later this month and, once it’s up and running in Ireland, Harvey intends bringing it to Australia where he has good local market knowledge and contacts.

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To pick up the pace of the rollout Harvey is looking to raise about €50,000 in the short term. The company will make its money through advertising, signing up affiliates and also through its retailer discount section which casts its net wider than the supermarket sector.

“The SavvySpender app is unique. There is no other app out there that lets shoppers compare prices as we do,” Harvey says. “The concept for the app has been some time in the making but given the rate at which grocery prices are now increasing, it’s an idea whose time has very much come.”

Cost of LivingSavvySpender