Grosh

Simplifies grocery shopping

What is product variant information?

Here’s an explanation of how product variants work in Grosh.
A product can be milk and a product variant could be the variant of Milk sold at eg Lidl.
Grosh supports different product variants, and it is most easy to do if you use barcodes.
Scanning a barcode of an item will trigger a registration form the first time this is done for your language.
You enter the name, brand and perhaps take a picture.
This is now stored in the system for the barcode.
The next time you want to add the same product variant to the shopping list, you should be able to scan a barcode and the item gets automatically added with the information entered previously.
Note: You need to enable product variants for the shopping list in question for this to work, see more here.

I added an item using barcode, why are item details not showing up?

Most likely because, product variants is not enabled for the the shopping list in question!
Tap the app header to show the list selection screen. Then tap the “pen” icon to the right of the list in question. This lets you edit the settings for the list.
Normally, this is OFF as most people scan a product not in order to buy that particular brand of milk, but just the generic milk product. When OFF any product added to the list is without variant info – also when added from a stock list. When you run out of stock on a stock list, then the system asks you if you would like to add the product to a shopping list.

How does price crowdsourcing work?

Besides this FAQ, also check out the intro guide under Menu-Information-Prices inside the app.
Under Settings, you can select between 3 types of price crowdsourcing
  1. No price crowdsourcing.
  2. Basic price crowdsourcing. The system, will prompt you for prices on commonly bought items, if you’ve not already filled them in. The system will also refill the price for an item if another user bought it at the same store. In effect, you participate in creating a shared grocery price database.
  3. Advanced price crowdsourcing. This mode is only intended for participants in grocery price surveys. It makes the app prompt you to enter not only price but also barcode for everything you buy.
There’s a blog post going into more detail about price crowdsourcing here: https://groshapp.com/grocery-prices/
Since that post, we have stepped up the detail level required before prices get shown to other users, as mentioned in the 2nd bullet below.

In general, there’s a big challenge with data quality when an app crowdsources information. Here’s a few steps we’ve taken in Grosh related to our crowdsourcing of grocery prices:

  • If you do not turn on “price crowdsourcing”, the app assumes that you are not accurate in entering prices, so it does not archive them after the purchase. This is done in order not to pollute the system with inaccurate prices.
  • In order to give the prices more value for other users, some variant information regarding the item must be stated.
    So just bread 1EUR will not go into the price database, but if one level of detail was added e.g. brand, weight, or organic marking – then this means that the price enters the common price database.

Can I keep the shopping list for next shopping?

Yes, if you create an account, you can create a list with items and then left swipe in the app the items you want to hide to declutter the list. The ones you buy, you right swipe. When opening the list the next time in another store, the hidden items are shown again.