Grocio

* OTHER TULSA SPECIALS *

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:40:44 -0500

I'm super happy to offer the first peek into what is about to become a nationwide platform for grocery sales and printed coupon information. Tulsa is home and is the first market for us to turn our attention to.

Hope you enjoy all the RSS Feeds and that they help you save money while streamlining your grocery shopping experience.

Tulsa/OKC Coupons - Lists all the printed coupons in the Tulsa and OKC newspapers

Food Pyramid
Harps
Homeland
Reasors
Warehouse Market

Grocio.com Beta Launch Successful

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:39:26 -0500

Well, the beta launch was nicely successful. Thanks are due to all who participated. In particular, my sincere gratitude to those who took time to provide specific feedback about what worked well and what required more thoughtful attention on our part.

We're tending to the nuts and bolts now and should be back better and stronger for the experience.

National Grocers Association

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:33:41 -0600

Grocio is now a supplier/vendor member of the National Grocers Association. We're headed to the national meeting and will be working hard for appointments with the decision makers and influencers within the grocery chains. Goal is to sign on several regional chains while we're there.

Demo Videos Updated

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:49:20 -0600

One of the things that has bothered me about how I've gone about marketing Grocio is the video demo. Until last night I had only offered one flavor and that was a streaming QuickTime video.

As time has rolled on that one thing has niggled at me through email feedback and plain old lack of time to do it the way I wanted to. So, in honor of a few of my resolutions for the new year... I just charged right in and did it.

The new video is much more concise. Shows Grocio.com in a more complete light and also sports multiple different encodings now (m4v, 3gp and flv). The only thing I'm lacking is a WMV format. I'm tinkering with encoding at different quality levels and once it's tight and right I'll post it. Meanwhile, enjoy the new demo videos.

[EDIT: A YouTube version has also been uploaded as of mid-day.]

ALL The Local Grocery Circulars (link)

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:44:06 -0600

Ever want to bypass the mountains of newsprint to get your local grocery circulars (ALL of them)? Well, we just made it easy. Enjoy!

See How We're Doing In Your State

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:27:13 -0600

The linked to basemap is slick as can be. Mapeed is doing some nifty mashups with Google Maps and latitude/longitude data. Mostly for us it makes it easy to see (at a glance) how many people are register in a given geography and zoom in to see how the concentration breaks out at the zip code level.

We'll be doing some more interesting things with Mapeed's technology before long. One of the things that comes to mind is placing markers on the map for each grocer.

c|Net Article

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:53:17 -0600

Sweet! Josh Lowendsohn saw fit to write an article on Grocio.com

Boy did the registrations take off after THAT!?

Premium accounts now available

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:35:24 -0600

Hope you're weathering the ups and downs of the market well. What better environment for Grocio to be setting out to make shoppers' household dollars stretch. Right?

Well, yes and no. Early stage companies like ours (startups) are taking a thrashing because the venture capital markets just turned tighter than ever and it looks like venture funding is going to be scarce for a while. That's ok. We've been eager to raise our first round of funding and likely still will. It's just going to be harder given current market conditions. As a result we're opening our subscription side of things TODAY to get the cash flow going and prove to the investment community we have a unique service people want. Which, translated, means a company the VC would do well to evaluate.

As one our our early registrants you'll have special discounted rates:

A one-year subscription for $25. The first day we open in YOUR market is when your subscription begins. Not a moment earlier.
$2.50 for an auto renewing month-to-month subscription. At 12 x $2.50 = $30 that's still less than you'll pay for a year of Sunday newspapers and FAR less than you'll pay for a GroceryGame.com subscription. The month-to-month option will open up upon launch.

ALL major credit cards and PayPal are happily accepted!
OR Click here If you prefer to use your credit card or debit card.

Paid subscribers will be entitled to access the following services once we launch:

Split store shopping. We realize not all stores will have everything you want and, frankly, no single store could possibly have the BEST price on every item.
Meal planning. Define your budget and preferences (eg. vegetarian, organic, lactose-free, etc) and we'll deliver back meals that fit both taste and budget.
Email/SMS Alerts. Grocio will notify you when your local stores put specific products on sale.
Price Trending. Helpful when you want to see what time of year (or month) certain product pricing spikes and troughs. Great for produce and meats!

This is bound to generate a lot of questions. Bring 'em on. I'll be blogging a lot of the answers over the next several days.

Local press has been GREAT!

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:25:54 -0600

We've been getting a terrific boost from an ad campaign we're participating in with the Tulsa World.

Registrations go way up each time that ad runs (< 500Kb PDF). So, if you ever wondered if newspaper advertising still worked or had sufficient pull to make it worth your while (as I did)... wonder no more. It does and it is.

New Demo Video & "The Contest"

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:20:43 -0600

We're having a GREAT time with the registration contest. If you haven't caught wind of it yet... We're giving away a $200 VISA gift card -or- a donation to the charity of the winner's choice (in their name of course).

During the course of the contest we've learned a couple things and have adapted. One of them is... Have a demo video available BEFORE we ask people to sign up (even if it is FREE).

So, that's what we've just done. Enjoy!

Oh! And sign up as many people as you can in the following states for triple credit toward the contest. (Must be registered yourself to win. Visit http://www.grocio.com/)

Hawaii
Wyoming
North Dakota
Iowa
Wisconsin
Vermont
New Hampshire

The REAL Grocio Elevator Pitch

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:41:00 -0500

Because of the Tulsa Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards we're getting much better at some things & the elevator pitch is one of them.

So, what you see in the previous entry is hogwash. What was I thinking!? That's NOT an elevator pitch! Here we go:

Grocio is a comparison shopping engine for... GROCERIES!

Starting with a shopper's grocery list we quickly identify the least expensive local grocer FOR THE WHOLE BASKET. So, right there, we just saved a lot of money - quickly and conveniently.

Then, we match digital coupons to the items the shopper is going to be buying (think AdWords only for coupons... it's all context sensitive). All of a sudden we're saving still more money and a LOT of time. If you've ever tried to clip and manage and remember to redeem the coupons... you know what a hassle that is. It's the #1 reason more people don't use coupons. We change the equation a bit, inject a lot of ease-of-use and VOILA! There are lots of things we can do around groceries and food from this platform.

Grocio. Comparing local groceries - apples to apples.

The Grocio Elevator Pitch

gerald@grocio.com — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 08:38:43 -0600

GROCIO does two things:

1) Comparison grocery shopping. People want to know their money is being spent well. So, when 20% of a person's annual income is going toward groceries being able to put 2% of that toward something else can be a big deal. That's the role we intend to serve at GROCIO.

No one else does this. At least, not for groceries. It's a concept whose idea has come and we're passionately on-fire about it!

2) Locating hard to find grocery items is no longer going to be a pain in the butt. There are a few things Michelle and I really enjoy having around the house that we can only buy at specific places. They aren't particularly out of the ordinary things either: A specific breakfast taquito, a specific flavored Pelegrino and a specific furniture polish.

We have set out to solve the "hard to find" problem (since we're going to have access to all the various product lines at all the various grocery outlets). Makes sense, right!?

Grocio - Official

gerald@grocio.com — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 03:56:21 -0600

If you've ever walked out of a grocery store wondering what your bill would have been at some other grocer... The GROCIO site is for you.

Now, face it. Stores are competitive and there's no one store that will have the best price on every item you want to buy. Right? So, GROCIO will take it one step further and suggest to you if you were willing to go to a second store how you might save even MORE!

Isn't that awesome!?

It's all under development now. But, once it's delivering on the concept you'll be able to shop for your groceries online and go to the store that will give you the best checkout price.

There's no annoying pre-alpha, beta, zeta list to sign up for. You're reading the RSS! That's where you'll find out exactly when we open up for business.