I’ve always been a fan of the Martha Stewart grocery bags (http://www.marthastewart.com/dap/term/3574). If you’re not familiar with the concept, Martha has a five themed recipes bundled with a shopping list so she takes all the thinking out of meal planning. The web user just selects a theme, prints out the shopping lists, and has ingredients to cook five excellent meals for the week. However, Martha has no way of knowing what’s in season or on sale. I had an idea a few years ago that I thought would revolutionize the way I shopped, but would be extremely hard to implement from my position. The idea is to build an app in partnership with a grocery store promoting sales through a grocery bag-like interface that would provide a weekly meal plan and populate a shopping list. Such an app would drive sales towards the store, raise awareness of weekly sales, and probably engender serious customer loyalty. For a total coup de force, the app would communicate the shopping list to existing home shop services.

Given my programming knowledge is limited to analyzing scientific data and I have no contacts in the grocery industry, I never seriously pursued the idea, but I am absolutely thrilled that Food on the Table (http://www.foodonthetable.com/preset) did all the work for me. The app functions almost exactly as I imagined mine would have and really takes the headache out of shopping and meal planning. While shopping yesterday, I actually showed the interface to the general manager at King Soopers and he was so impressed he called a Monday meeting to discuss King Soopers pursuing a similar strategy (and have me some $2 off coupons to boot). I genuinely believe apps like this will transform the grocery industry and I’m excited to see how King Soopers will capitalize.