How Grocery List Plus works
Every feature, what it is for, and how to use it.
Getting set up
Your stores: Primary and Preferred
What it is
Your Primary Store is the one we price against by default. Preferred Stores are the others you are happy to shop, and they are what a price comparison compares.
Why it helps
Grocery prices are set per location, not per chain, so we cannot tell you what anything costs until we know where you shop. It is the setting everything else depends on.
How to use it
Add your address, pick a Primary Store, then add any others you would consider. You can change your Primary at any time and every price on the site follows it.
WHERE
Locations · or step 3 of the setup wizard
You will also see farmers markets and butcher shops near you. We list them as places to shop but do not have their prices yet — if one of them is yours, you can apply to sell with us.
Starter Inventory
What it is
When you sign up we pre-fill your Home Inventory with around sixteen staples most households keep, priced at your Primary Store.
Why it helps
An empty app cannot suggest anything. Starting you with real items means price comparison, Suggested Items and recipes work on day one instead of after a week of data entry.
How to use it
Review the list right after signup and uncheck anything you do not buy. Nothing is locked — it is a starting point, not a commitment.
WHERE
Shown right after signup · later in Home Inventory
The setup wizard
What it is
A nine-step run-through covering your details, addresses, stores, delivery, recipe preferences, health profile, household members and pets.
Why it helps
Each step feeds something specific. Skipping them all still leaves a working app, but the suggestions and prices get sharper with every one you complete.
How to use it
Work through it at signup, or skip and come back. Every step is editable later from Settings, so nothing you choose here is permanent.
WHERE
Offered at signup · Settings to revisit
Your kitchen
Home Inventory
What it is
The record of what you actually keep at home — what it is, roughly how much is left, what you paid and when you last bought it.
Why it helps
Almost everything else reads from it. Suggested Items, Meal Maker and Food Recall Alerts are all answering questions about what you already own.
How to use it
Items arrive automatically when you mark a list as purchased, or you can add them by search or barcode. The Running Low view collects everything getting close to empty so you can add them to a list in one go.
WHERE
Home Inventory · Running Low is a view inside it
Sizes show in imperial or metric depending on your unit preference, which you can change in App Preferences.
Recurring Items
What it is
Items you buy on a rhythm — milk every week, coffee every fortnight. You set the cadence and we put them back on your list when they are due.
Why it helps
The things people forget are almost never the unusual ones. They are the staples you buy so often you stop thinking about them until you are out.
How to use it
Open an item in Home Inventory, switch on Recurring, and set how often you buy it. We learn from when you actually mark it purchased and adjust the timing.
WHERE
Home Inventory → any item → Recurring
Suggested Items
What it is
Items we think you are about to need, based on how quickly you have got through them before. Nothing joins your list until you say so.
Why it helps
This is the difference between a list you have to remember to fill and one that arrives already mostly right. Recurring Items is a schedule you set; Suggested Items is a prediction you accept or dismiss.
How to use it
They appear on your Dashboard and in your Grocery List. Add the ones you want and dismiss the ones you do not — dismissing teaches us, so suggestions get quieter about things you never buy.
WHERE
Dashboard · Grocery List · Home Inventory → Running Low
Shopping
Your Grocery List
What it is
The list you actually shop from. You can keep several — a weekly shop, a party, a stock-up — and one of them is your working list at any time.
Why it helps
A list written before you are standing in the shop is the single most effective thing you can do about your grocery bill. Everything the store does to your basket works on unplanned buying.
How to use it
Add items by search, from a recipe, from Suggested Items, or by barcode. Rename, duplicate or archive lists as you go.
WHERE
Grocery List
Shopping and checking off
What it is
The in-store mode. Your list reorders itself into walk order and you tick items off as they go in the trolley.
Why it helps
Walking a shop in list order means doubling back. Walk order follows the layout instead, and ticking off as you go is what keeps your Home Inventory accurate without a data-entry session afterwards.
How to use it
Open your working list in the shop and mark items purchased. When you finish, those items update your Home Inventory with what you paid.
WHERE
Grocery List → your working list
Comparing prices across stores
What it is
A basket-level comparison of your list across your Primary and Preferred Stores, so you can see which trip actually costs less.
Why it helps
Comparing a handful of headline items tells you very little — stores win on different things. The only comparison that answers "where should I shop this week" is the whole basket.
How to use it
Build your list, then open the comparison. Items we cannot price at a given store are shown as unpriced rather than guessed at, so you can see how complete each total is.
WHERE
Grocery List → compare
A total can differ from the shelf for real reasons — promotions, size differences and local pricing. We explain the mechanics in How supermarket sales are designed.
Best Value and unit price
What it is
The price per ounce, pound or unit alongside the shelf price, so two different pack sizes can be compared honestly.
Why it helps
The shelf price only tells you what you will pay today. Unit price tells you whether it is worth buying, and it is the number that reveals a package that quietly got smaller.
How to use it
Unit price shows on product listings wherever we have enough information to compute it. Where a pack is concentrated or sold by count, treat it with care — volume is not always comparable.
WHERE
Any product listing · search results
The traps that make a unit price misleading are worth knowing — read the full explanation.
Coupons and weekly ads
What it is
Offers and weekly circulars from the stores you shop, matched against what is on your list where we can.
Why it helps
Coupons are only worth the attention if they apply to something you were already buying. Matching them to your list is what separates a saving from a reason to buy something you did not need.
How to use it
Browse what is available or check your list for matches. Some offers need a loyalty account with the store — those are marked.
WHERE
Coupons · Weekly Ads
Loyalty cards
What it is
A place to keep your store loyalty cards so you are not hunting for a keyring at the till.
Why it helps
A growing share of shelf prices are loyalty prices. Not scanning the card means paying the non-member price on things you thought were on offer.
How to use it
Add a card once and it stays available on your phone at checkout.
WHERE
Loyalty Reward Cards
Food
Recipes
What it is
A browsable collection of recipes with ingredients, steps and nutrition, which you can save, rate and send straight to a Grocery List.
Why it helps
Deciding what to cook and working out what to buy are the same job done twice. Sending a recipe to your list collapses them into one.
How to use it
Browse or search, save what you like, and add the ingredients to a list. Anything already in your Home Inventory is accounted for, so you only shop for the gaps.
WHERE
Recipes
Meal Maker
What it is
Recipes you can cook right now from what is already in your Home Inventory, ranked by how little is missing.
Why it helps
This is the opposite question to browsing. Recipes asks what you feel like eating; Meal Maker asks what you can make tonight without going out. It is also the fastest way to use up what you already bought.
How to use it
Open Meal Maker and it reads your Home Inventory. Each suggestion shows how many ingredients you have and what is missing, so a near-miss is still useful.
WHERE
Meal Maker
Meal Planner
What it is
A calendar for the week ahead — assign meals to days and see, in one view, what you are short of.
Why it helps
Planning a week is what turns a series of improvised shops into one. It also tells you what to buy once rather than three times.
How to use it
Drop recipes onto days, then push everything missing to a Grocery List in one action. How far ahead you can plan depends on your plan.
WHERE
Meal Planner
Food Recall Alerts
What it is
We match published FDA and USDA recalls against the products in your Home Inventory and tell you when one affects something you own.
Why it helps
Recalls are announced constantly and almost none of them concern you. Matching them to your actual items is the difference between background noise and a warning you should act on.
How to use it
Alerts arrive as notifications and appear against the affected item. Check the lot code and dates on your package before deciding — a recall usually covers a specific production run, not every unit of the product.
WHERE
Food Recalls · notifications · flagged in Home Inventory
Reading a recall notice properly takes about two seconds once you know which lines matter — here is how.
Sharing
Your Household
What it is
The people you live with. A household shares one Home Inventory and can work from the same lists.
Why it helps
Two people shopping from two separate lists is how you end up with three jars of cumin. One shared picture of what is in the kitchen is the point.
How to use it
Invite the people you live with. Everyone in a household sees the same inventory — there is no per-item privacy, by design, because a shared kitchen that hides items from some members would not be much use.
WHERE
Household Information
Friends and Groups
What it is
Sharing a specific list with people outside your home — a group trip, a shared event, a parent who shops for you.
Why it helps
Not everyone you shop with lives with you, and you rarely want those people seeing your whole kitchen.
How to use it
Add friends, put them in groups, and share individual lists. This is separate from your household: being someone's friend does not give them your inventory, and being in your household does not put them in your friends list.
WHERE
Friends and Groups
Settings
Shopping Preferences
What it is
The rules that decide how a Grocery List gets built — how items are grouped, how quantities are proposed, what gets added automatically.
Why it helps
If a list keeps arriving in a shape you did not expect, this is almost always where it was decided.
How to use it
Adjust the rules and the next list follows them. Existing lists are left alone.
WHERE
Settings → Shopping Preferences
Product Settings
What it is
Substitution rules — what should happen when the exact product you wanted is not available.
Why it helps
This is a different question from how a list is assembled, which is why it lives on its own page. One is about building the list, the other about what happens while shopping it.
How to use it
Set whether substitutions are allowed at all, and how close a replacement has to be. Brand-loyal on some items and relaxed on others is a perfectly normal setup.
WHERE
Settings → Product Settings
Recipe Preferences
What it is
Dietary needs, allergies, cuisines you like and ingredients you never want to see.
Why it helps
It filters Recipes, Meal Maker and Meal Planner together. Setting it once is what stops you scrolling past food you cannot eat.
How to use it
Set your restrictions and preferences. Allergies are treated as hard exclusions rather than a ranking signal.
WHERE
Settings → Recipe Preferences
Notifications
What it is
What we contact you about and how — Food Recall Alerts, Suggested Items, list activity, household invitations and account messages.
Why it helps
Recall alerts and marketing are not the same thing and should not be one switch. These are controlled separately so you can keep the ones that matter.
How to use it
Turn categories on or off individually. Anything sent by email also appears in your in-app messages, so turning off email does not mean losing the record.
WHERE
Settings → Message Settings
