A New Zealand company has launched an app to help Kiwis compare prices of weekly grocery bills between different supermarkets with the aim of easing the cost of living crisis. Photo / Supplied
A New Zealand company has launched an app to help Kiwis compare prices of weekly grocery bills between different supermarkets with the aim of easing the cost of living crisis. Photo / Supplied
A New Zealand company has launched an app to help Kiwis compare prices of weekly grocery bills between supermarkets with the aim of easing the cost of living crisis.
Data tracking and reporting company Sumfood brought out its free app, FoodSpies, on December 1 to give consumers information on which supermarkets had the cheapest grocery prices by working out the cost of each “total shopping” haul.
Sumfood’s Dr Helen Darling said the aim was to “drive supermarkets towards fairer and more transparent pricing” by revealing the price differences between retailers.
It follows the announcement by the Government earlier this year to set up a new watchdog to ensure supermarkets weren’t ripping off shoppers. A Grocery Commissioner would hold the sector to account and ramp up competition.
Sumfood’s Dr Helen Darling says the aim of the company's new price comparison app FoodSpies is to “drive supermarkets towards fairer and more transparent pricing” by revealing the price differences between retailers. Photo / Supplied
An inquiry by the Commerce Commission, released in March, found the two big supermarket chains, Woolworths and Foodstuffs, were using their dominant market petition to push excess risks, costs and uncertainty on to suppliers.
Initial findings confirmed shoppers’ suspicions that they were not getting a fair deal.
Foodstuffs and Woolworths make up 80 per cent of the industry in this country. That dominance is partly blamed for New Zealand having the fifth-highest prices at the checkout among 38 OECD countries.
The Herald reported last month that the annual increase in food prices had reached a 14-year high of 10.1 per cent. Stats NZ data showed food prices jumped 0.8 per cent in the month of October - and fruit and vegetable prices increased by 17 per cent in a year.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister David Clark announced earlier this year the Government would set up a new watchdog to ensure supermarkets weren’t ripping off shoppers. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Sumfood’s food pricing tool revealed there were inconsistencies between different supermarkets in the same and other suburbs. FoodSpies was designed to use crowd-sourced data from consumers to calculate the average price of a supermarket shop.
Darling said, “We know that where you live has an impact on what you pay at the supermarket – it’s time for some transparency. It’s exciting. We hope this will help.
“We’ve been thinking about it for a while - you know, ‘we really should be doing something about this’, and then the cost of living crisis kicked in and we needed to fast track it.”
The app calculates the average price of a full supermarket trip, such as a big weekly shop, and takes into account how many people were being fed by each buy. Shoppers could log on and see the average price for supermarkets in their region.
A New Zealand company has launched an app to help Kiwis compare prices of weekly grocery bills between different supermarkets with the aim of easing the cost of living crisis. Photo / Supplied
“Now we need people to start sharing the price of their shop,” Darling said. The app required “innovative” people to start using it and upload the prices they paid.
“As the amount of data builds, supermarkets will no longer be able to hide behind price differences,” Sumfood said in a statement.
Darling said the idea for the app came from her “young, motivated team who are committed to making food systems safer and fairer”.
Sumfood has collected reports on food issues, including concerns about food preparation and hygiene or contaminants and foreign objects in products, for the past two years. It then gives consumers advice on what to do and who to contact.
