Guides

We built ManyStops for our own household, and along the way we kept running into the same handful of questions. Is it cheaper to drive out to the big store this week? Was the club membership a good idea? Why did the price notebook in the kitchen drawer stop getting filled in? These pieces are our answers, written for anybody who shops at more than one store. You do not need the app to get something out of them.

The price book, and why apps gave up on it

Our grandparents kept a notebook of what things cost. It still works, and almost everyone who starts one stops within a month. This piece is about why the habit breaks, and what changes when the price gets written down in the aisle with the jar in your hand.

The loop or the one big trip

Every week there is a choice between one long drive to the store that has everything and a round of the nearer ones. Most of us decide by habit. Here is how to decide by minutes and by your own prices, and how to notice the weeks when the right answer is to stay home.

Is the warehouse club worth it? Work it out from your receipts

A membership pays for itself on the things you would have bought anyway and on nothing else. This is the sum we did on our own receipts, step by step, and what surprised us when we did it.

Which shopping list apps learn your store, and what that means

A list in the order you walk the store is a lovely thing. Apps get there in three different ways, and the way they get there decides where it works. An honest look, including at the limits of our own.

Shopping at independent and international grocers

The stores where many of us buy the food we actually cook are the ones most shopping apps cannot see, with no catalogue or floor plan for an app to read. How to keep a list and a record of prices that works there too.

One shopping list for a shared house

Half of what a shared house buys belongs to everybody, and half to one person. How to keep one list, stop buying the same thing twice, and settle up after each trip.

Buying supplies for an office or a club

For the person who always ends up buying the coffee or the snacks. One list the whole team can ask from, a budget, and the receipts in one place.

One week, three kinds of store

A warehouse club, a discount grocer and a local market each do one thing well. How to send each item to the right one without spending the saving on the drive.

ManyStops or AnyList

AnyList is a well-made shared list with recipes beside it. This sets the two side by side for a week at several stores, from what AnyList's own site says.

ManyStops or a price-comparison app

Flipp shows the week's flyers and Basket compares a list's total between chains. ManyStops plans a trip across your own stores. Three different jobs, and how they fit together.

ManyStops beside the other list apps

Seven shopping apps, each described from its own website, and what each one is for.