Right now, many people are simply wondering how they can get food at all, with delivery slots taken up and supermarket shelves bare due to coronavirus stockpilers.
For families where money is tight, though, that isn’t their only worry.
After the closure last month of the MySupermarket grocery price comparison tool, shoppers were left with a gap in the market whereby they were unable to hunt for the lowest prices across UK’s major food shops and bring their costs down.
However, the team behind LatestDeals.co.uk have stepped in with their own tool to help those struggling when they need it most.
Tom Kelsey 33 from Oxford; Tom Church, 29 from London; and Deepak Tailor 32 from Essex, have made a free tool that compares the prices for essential supermarket products at Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose and Iceland.
Within their LatestDeals app, users can search keywords for the items they buy, and see how much each costs before they do their shop for food.
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, said, ‘We started to receive hundreds of messages asking for help. Supermarket prices are increasing, there are fewer discounts, and the lack of stock for home brands means people are forced to upgrade to more expensive products.
‘The only supermarket price comparison tool was MySupermarket. But this shut down last month.
‘I asked our community if they would find it helpful if we made a free alternative. The response was overwhelming. For some parents, saving 20p on bread is the difference between having food on the table or not. Thousands are losing their jobs and waiting for Universal Credit.
‘Knowing where is cheapest to buy your essentials is critical and essential information at this time. People are rapidly descending into financial difficulty and we knew we had to do something.’
Tech whizz Tom Kelsey spent days awake and working round the clock to get the tool up and running, and within 72 hours of the idea it’s now ready to use.
Answering whether this app might encourage shoppers to head out to multiple shops at a time when the advice is the exact opposite, Tom Church said: ‘”We have exclusively focused on the six big supermarkets that do online shopping and home delivery.
‘We have not included Aldi, Lidl, Co-Op or other food stores yet for precisely this reason. Plus, to help supermarkets who are under strain, if their websites are down or have a queue system we’ll hide those results from members.’
He continues: ‘We want to get this out to people to help them as fast as possible. It might not sound like a big deal to some folk, but when you only have £20 a week to feed your family, it’s a huge problem.’
The tool is within the Latest Deals app, free on Google Android and Apple iOS.
Once you’ve downloaded the app, press the search button, and you’ll see ‘Supermarket Price Comparison’ where you can run the searches.
If you already have the Latest Deals app, you’ll need to update it to the newest version to use it.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/27/bargain-hunters-create-free-supermarket-price-comparison-app-fight-rising-food-costs-families-12464492/?ITO=squid
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