Mobile Food Apps Race Fueled by Couponing

(Editor's note: Chuck Ward is the executive director of Florida Mobile Fusion in New Tampa. This is his first blog entry for New Tampa Patch.)

Americans are spending thousands of dollars each year on groceries and very few are getting any results! You might even be one of them. Maybe you've tried the coupon books or one of the other extreme couponing methods out there with little success.

Are grocery shoppers more likely to scan a jar of their favorite peanut butter in order to find an obscure coupon somewhere? Or will smart phones be used only for creating shopping lists in order to avoid impulse purchases by those who are organized and cost conscious.

These are now the billion dollar questions facing the grocery industry.  An industry that makes a combined annual revenue of $465 billion, according to the Hoovers website.

Combining the raging fad of couponing with our love of mobile technology has caused retailers to bring about a flood of activity and battle in a normally sleepy and quiet grocery market.

Startup companies such as ShopSavvy have experienced a huge success in helping consumers save money on electronics and clothes by leveraging bar code and QR Code  technology.

Now local Tampa grocers such as , and are creating mobile apps to entice shoppers to use and ultimately pay out more cash in stores.

Normal people who are using smart phones in the supermarket aisles may seem like an bizarre and strange thought, according to Al Ferarra, director of retail services at the accounting and consulting firm BDO, but not too far in the distant past, so did the notion of using a smart phone screen for an airline ticket.

“Every day, people at airports show their phones to TSA agents to get on planes. It’s normal,” Ferarra said. “There’s no question that supermarkets and their suppliers are going to start something in mobile.”

Here are some of the grocery app performers and their approach.

The headmost corporations to get into the travelling grocery tools were start-ups.

More than 20 Million people have downloaded and installed the ShopSavvy app on their smart phone or tablet devices. Most of those app installations were for consumers to scan high ticket items such as electronics and computers or shoes in hopes of finding cheaper prices online or nearby.

Now ShopSavvy is getting into vittles and in a huge fashion. Agreements have already been reached with Walmart, Whole Foods, Rite-Aid, Safeway and others to accumulate pricing on goods and services.

Executives at ShopSavvy anticipate dual scenarios. Customers scanning an item, say a jar of peanut butter to find vouchers and cost cutting coupons and patrons who will use the web version of the ShopSavvy app at home to create a list that can be used on a mobile device.

While saving a small amount on a single item may seem inconsequential (paraphrased)  according to John Boyd, co-founder of ShopSavvy, “But put together, it all adds up.”

Coupons.com is at present the biggest and largest global online coupon site. Now the company has large aspirations for the mobile platform as well, but in a different fashion.

“We think that by the time you’re in the store, it’s probably too late to present a coupon on your phone to show the cashier,” said Dhana Pawar, director of mobile products at Coupons.com

But there are other occasions as the company’s GroceryiQ web based aid lets consumers sort through products, uncover savings and add to their store loyalty card. “That makes a lot more sense for a user at the register.”

There will also be the ability in newer cell phones to discretely and at the request of consumers to “push” announcements that could feed bargains and other products into mobile devices unobtrusively, according to Pawar.

Ratings is the philosophy that the startup Consmr is targeting. Launched in June 2011, Consmr already has greater than 50 thousand ratings on grocery and drugstore products. Consmr lets the public give their opinion about virtually any product as similar to rating a movie or eatery on items from Claussen pickles to Special K cereal.

Consmr “is like an Angie’s List or Yelp for the supermarket,” said Ryan Charles, company CEO. “And when [a consumer] scans a product you can see if it’s truly gluten-free, organic, or good for your skin.”

Soon the company hopes to incorporate live coupons so consumers who rate an item will have a reason to buy and save on it also.

Sensing a similar opportunity in mobile, local supermarkets are also buying into the technology, but under their own conditions.

has recently started a mobile app that will let shoppers review the weekly deal flyer and create a shopping list based on the layout of a particular store.

Publix began a mobile web page earlier this year but as of right now you can only see where the nearest store is along with the weekly circular.  Officials are expecting to add other functions this fall to the project, according to Publix spokesperson, Shannon Patten.

Rounding out the local industry participants are Target and Wal-Mart.  Both have added items to their respective mobile apps so in store shoppers and other users can review live inventory data and reviews.  No more getting the age old line “there is no more in stock.”

For instance, one WalMart customer wrote a recent review claiming that the “roasted garlic artisan loaf bread may be the best ever eaten”, aside from Grandma’s.

Target has recently began to issue mobile coupons, but one must sign up online.  The retailer, who posted a 2010 net profit of $2.9 billion, will require all coupons to have a bar code that must be scanned by the store’s computer rather than just paying a displayed discounted price.

The biggest mystery facing retailers and the industry is whether combined mobile, shopping and couponing becomes a normal feature or just a short lived fad.

While mobile scanning applications is intelligent when it come to price comparing and shopping for high ticket items, such as cars, plasma televisions and digital cameras.

It is another matter when it comes to a cart of groceries for the single mom, stretching her dollar.

“Let’s assume a woman has 35 coupons stuck somewhere on her phone.  She’s in the checkout line sorting through them,” said Ferarra. “When her boss calls.  Then she’s sorting again.  One thing supermarkets hate, for sure, is having a long checkout line.”