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Very cool! I did something similar in Canada (https://grocerytracker.ca/ https://grocerytracker.ca/)

sakisv 2y ago
Oh nice! A thorny problem in my case is that the same item is named in 3 different ways between the 3 supermarkets which makes it very hard and annoying to do a proper comparison. Did you have a similar problem?
- nosecreek 2y ago
  Absolutely! It’s made it difficult to implement some of the cross-retailer comparison features I would like to add. For my charts I’ve just manually selected some products, but I’ve also been trying to get a “good enough but not perfect” string comparison algorithm working.
  - sakisv 2y ago
    Ah yes. My approach so far has been to first extract the brand names (which are also not written the same way for some fcking reason!), update the strings, and then compare the remaining. If they have a high similarity (e.g. >95%) then they could be automatically merged, and then anything between 75%-95% can be reviewed manually.
    - victornomad 2y ago
      I am not by any mean an expert but maybe using some LLMs or a sentence transformer here could help to do the job?
      - sakisv 2y ago
        I gave it a very quick try with chatgpt, but wasn't very impressed from the results. Granted it was around January, and things may have progressed... (Βut then again why take the easy approach when Ι can waste a few afternoons playing around with string comparisons)
  - project2501a 2y ago
    would maintaining a map of products product_x[supermarket] with 2-3 values work? I don't suspect that supermarkets would be very keen to change the name (but they might play other dirty games) I am thinking of doing the same thing for linux packages in debian and fedora
- seszett 2y ago
  I have built a similar system for myself, but since it's small scale I just have "groups" of similar items that I manually populate. I have the additional problem that I want to compare products across France and Belgium (Dutch-speaking side) so there is no hope at all to group products automatically. My manual system allows me to put together say 250g and 500g packaging of the same butter, or of two of the butters that I like to buy, so I can always see easily which one I should get (it's often the 250g that's cheaper by weight these days). Also the 42000 or so different packagings for Head and Shoulders shampoo. 250ml, 270ml, 285ml, 480ml, 500ml (285ml is usually cheapest). I'm pretty sure they do it on purpose so each store doesn't have to match price with the others because it's a "different product".
odiroot 2y ago
Similar for Austria: https://heisse-preise.io https://heisse-preise.io
snac 2y ago
Love your site! It was a great source of inspiration with the amount of data you collect. I did the same and made https://grocerygoose.ca/ https://grocerygoose.ca/ Published the API endpoints that I “discovered” to make the app https://github.com/snacsnoc/grocery-app https://github.com/snacsnoc/grocery-app (see HACKING.md) It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when devs like us have to go to such great lengths to track the price of a commodity (food).
kareemm 2y ago
Was looking for one in Canada. Tried this out and it seems like some of the data is missing from where I live (halifax). Got an email I can hit you up at? Mine's in my HN profile - couldn't find yours on HN or your site.
- nosecreek 2y ago
  For sure, just replace the first dot in the url from my profile with an @
maxglute 2y ago
Excellent work.

Oh nice! A thorny problem in my case is that the same item is named in 3 different ways between the 3 supermarkets which makes it very hard and annoying to do a proper comparison. Did you have a similar problem?

nosecreek 2y ago
Absolutely! It’s made it difficult to implement some of the cross-retailer comparison features I would like to add. For my charts I’ve just manually selected some products, but I’ve also been trying to get a “good enough but not perfect” string comparison algorithm working.
- sakisv 2y ago
  Ah yes. My approach so far has been to first extract the brand names (which are also not written the same way for some fcking reason!), update the strings, and then compare the remaining. If they have a high similarity (e.g. >95%) then they could be automatically merged, and then anything between 75%-95% can be reviewed manually.
  - victornomad 2y ago
    I am not by any mean an expert but maybe using some LLMs or a sentence transformer here could help to do the job?
    - sakisv 2y ago
      I gave it a very quick try with chatgpt, but wasn't very impressed from the results. Granted it was around January, and things may have progressed... (Βut then again why take the easy approach when Ι can waste a few afternoons playing around with string comparisons)
- project2501a 2y ago
  would maintaining a map of products product_x[supermarket] with 2-3 values work? I don't suspect that supermarkets would be very keen to change the name (but they might play other dirty games) I am thinking of doing the same thing for linux packages in debian and fedora
seszett 2y ago
I have built a similar system for myself, but since it's small scale I just have "groups" of similar items that I manually populate. I have the additional problem that I want to compare products across France and Belgium (Dutch-speaking side) so there is no hope at all to group products automatically. My manual system allows me to put together say 250g and 500g packaging of the same butter, or of two of the butters that I like to buy, so I can always see easily which one I should get (it's often the 250g that's cheaper by weight these days). Also the 42000 or so different packagings for Head and Shoulders shampoo. 250ml, 270ml, 285ml, 480ml, 500ml (285ml is usually cheapest). I'm pretty sure they do it on purpose so each store doesn't have to match price with the others because it's a "different product".

odiroot 2y ago

Similar for Austria: https://heisse-preise.io https://heisse-preise.io

snac 2y ago

Love your site! It was a great source of inspiration with the amount of data you collect. I did the same and made https://grocerygoose.ca/ https://grocerygoose.ca/ Published the API endpoints that I “discovered” to make the app https://github.com/snacsnoc/grocery-app https://github.com/snacsnoc/grocery-app (see HACKING.md) It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when devs like us have to go to such great lengths to track the price of a commodity (food).

kareemm 2y ago

Was looking for one in Canada. Tried this out and it seems like some of the data is missing from where I live (halifax). Got an email I can hit you up at? Mine's in my HN profile - couldn't find yours on HN or your site.

nosecreek 2y ago
For sure, just replace the first dot in the url from my profile with an @

maxglute 2y ago

Excellent work.