The Grocery Game May Not Be For Everyone

No, I am not referring to grocery shopping in general, I am actually talking about a website dedicated to helping its users get the most bang for the buck at grocery stores.

At first the premise is promising, you can log on to thegrocerygame.com, and the site will tell you what is on sale at your local grocery store. By tracking the trends, coupons and in store sales, the site will give you an itemized grocery list. It breaks down its list into three categories, the first being made up of items that you should only buy if you need them that week, the second for items that you should buy in regular quantities, and the third category is for those items that you should stockpile because they are at their lowest selling point of the year. Again, I was on board for this. I was a little disappointed when I logged on and realized that I would have to pay to use the website, and that the website would not provide the coupons, I would have to cut them out of my local papers myself. The breakdown of price was only about $1.25 per week, however tack on the cost of all of the local papers I would need to buy and that cost goes up dramatically. Newspapers were cut out of my budget for two main reasons, I can get all of the information online for free, and by reading my news online I would not enlarge my carbon footprint to a greater size than it already is!

I decided that I would sign up for the trial period of the Grocery Game, which only cost me $1 for the first 4 weeks. At this point I was told that not ALL stores in my area were covered under the Game umbrella. I suppose I was lucky that my local Stop and Shop was covered, so I proceeded. The first thing I noticed when my list was generated is that it is a general list that everyone who subscribes to this store receives. I would have liked to enter items that I regularly purchase or even categories that I was interested in. The result of not being able to customize my list still did not deter me from going forward. I was very excited after the set up process to see which of my favorite foods would be on sale this week. I was greatly disappointed to learn that nothing that my husband or I regularly consume was on the list. Our list, and perhaps it is just for our store, was full of junk food and weird soups that I would never consider trying.

I am a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, and I am willing to pay a little more for fresh produce and healthy foods, but I am still always looking for deals and ways to save money. Don't get me wrong, I will not pay exorbitant prices to have these items, I tend to pick and choose what healthy foods I buy based on what is on sale that week. I will not settle for a cheap bag of greasy potato chips, I will bypass the chips that I am not interested in anyway and I will look for a healthier cracker or chip choice that is on sale.

After weighing the pros and cons of being a member of the Grocery Game, I decided to cancel my subscription the next day. Most of the items on my list needed coupons from previous weeks newspapers that I hadn't saved up yet and I have no real need to stockpile groceries as it is just my husband and I. I didn't like any of the items that I was told to stockpile, and even if I did, I have no extra storage in my kitchen area. It was actually a rather easy decision for me to make.