COLUMBUS, Ohio — Try turning to new technology to save you time and money at the grocery store. Food prices are up 28% since 2019, according to a Nerdwallet report this month, and consumers are looking to offset higher production costs and supply chain disruptions.
Artificial intelligence has now entered the chat and there are some easy, and free ways to utilize technology, and you don’t even need to leave the house.
“I think there are two areas where money can be saved with groceries. One is adaptive meal planning and the other is tracking grocery discounts for adaptive meal planning,” said Omar Kouhlani, the CEO of Runmic Inc. out of Washington D.C. “There are two nice ways to use ChatGPT. One is to take a picture of the flyer that grocery stores provide with all the discounts and ask it to come up with a set of meal plans that leverage these discounts. Sometimes you might be surprised that actually, your actual meal plan will not change much, but it will be repurposed around those discounts for your benefit and your wallets benefit.”
Kouhlani outlines the prompts you can also make to tailor a grocery list to you and your family’s liking.
“You can be as detailed as you want. So just to give you a word-by-word prompt, you could say, search online for the latest grocery discounts and promotions from my store and my zip code. I have a family of four. My daughter is allergic to peanuts, and my son is lactose intolerant, and it will do all the heavy work for you,” Koulani said.
Consumer 10 also found you can ask AI to come up with seven nights worth of meals, organize the ingredients by grocery aisle and create a recipe.
Kouhlani suggested using the apps Yummly and Mealime for meal planning, and Flipp and Ibotta for grocery discounts.
Example AI prompts:
Meal planning
- "Suggest 5 recipes incorporating these coupons that are also budget-friendly based on current prices at my local market." Then attach pictures of flyers from the store or download it from social media.
Tracking discounts
- "Search online for the latest grocery discounts and promotions from [Store]. We are a family of four and my daughter is lactose intolerant."
10TV reached out to Kroger and Walmart to learn about new technology coming to store shelves. Walmart did not specify new technology being developed.
A spokesperson for Kroger told Consumer 10 they are testing electronic labels instead of paper labels.
“Anything in that realm would be used to bring the lowest price to our customers, full stop, end of story,” said Mark Bruce, the Corporate Affairs Manager for Kroger's Columbus division. “We're focused on offering the lowest price to our customers every day, any way we can use technology to do that. That's what we're going to try to do.”
Kroger, Giant Eagle and Walmart have started Thanksgiving savings already.
Giant Eagle responded and said it is offering 20% average savings on more than 200 products. The promotion includes a free turkey if enough money is spent.
Walmart announced a list of items through December 25, with items lower than the previous year. The so-called inflation-free Thanksgiving meal reportedly serves eight people at the cost of $7 a plate.
“Some of the best value you can find in our store is in our brand's products, private selection field and buying those different types of Kroger brand products, because we control the process,” said Bruce. “We can offer lower prices there, and we can offer savings in those areas as well. If you're a loyal Our Brand's customer we’ll push savings to you as well. “