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Show HN: Daily price tracking for Trader Joe's
- cnees 3y agoAs of right now, it costs $9,039.55 to buy one of everything on the list.
- dtgriscom 3y agoThis is cool, but with the apparently random ordering it's just about impossible to find anything. Add sort buttons? A description of why this ordering is used?
- yoyopa 3y agoit would be nice to round all the 0.99 to 1.00 so its easier to see how much things really cost
- moxplod 3y agoIs there something like this for costco?
- cmoog 3y agoSource code here: https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes
- rconti 3y agoThis implies the prices are the same across all TJs stores - is that the case?
- cmoog 3y agoGood catch. These prices are hard coded to my local store in Chicago. Soon I will add support for selecting your local store.
- owlninja 3y agoI am seeing comments that their prices are the same nationwide? Less work for you if true :)
- Omni5cience 3y agoI think most non-perishable goods are the same across stores. There are regional differences between some perishable goods based on where they come from.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIt would be shocking if it was.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 3y agoIt is the case. It's kind of a famous quirk about their stores, that prices are identical nationwide.
- xfour 3y agoI feel like Charles Shaw is an exception to that and cheaper in California? https://www.foodandwine.com/news/trader-joes-two-buck-chuck-is-finally-2-again-in-california https://www.foodandwine.com/news/trader-joes-two-buck-chuck-...
- azemetre 3y agoInteresting! I’ve always held on to my grocery receipts for the last 8 years. I took pictures of them but when I moved a box got water damaged so now I only have like the last 3ish years. Is there any open source software that I can use to transfer these receipts into a useful csv? I have an idea for a few interesting data visualizations as I’d often buy the same things every week. Grocery bill went from like $70 to $150 with not much changes from what I can tell. Would be cool to put it out in the public.
- graphe 3y agohttps://docs.paperless-ngx.com https://docs.paperless-ngx.com Nextcloud also has OCR. You can use a scanner with either. Avoid touching the receipts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5453537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5453537/
- jxramos 3y agodidn't see anything specifically receipt oriented but found a little blurb here that mentions receipts almost tangentially https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/usage/#basic-searching https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/usage/#basic-searching
- jacurtis 3y agoI run paperless on an Unraid server at home and it works really well. It has "machine learning" (based on a model that you host yourself that grows as you use it). It has good search, impressive OCR, and generally works really well. My only complaint is that it lacks a good organization workflow. I have a shared network folder and any file (image, pdf, etc) that you put on that folder gets immediately consumed into Paperless. This happens almost immediately. I have a printer/scanner that allows me to scan to a SMB network drive. So I configured any scans from it to go to that shared folder, which makes integration really nice. I also use GeniusScan on my phone to scan to the same network drive (which requires pro, which is ~$16 a year I think). Genius Scan can save locally to your phone and upload later when you get home, which makes for a good workflow. The problem is that once it gets into Paperless, there's not a good workflow for reviewing and labeling the file. I have been meaning to sit down and provide a contribution to the open source project to improve this, but haven't found the time to do it yet. This is the biggest weakness of the project imo. For those that have never used paperless. The naming may confuse you. It started off as an open source project named paperless. Then it got abandoned and a team picked it up to update it and make it more modern, and they renamed it paperless-ng (for angular I assume, the new frontend). Then that project lost momentum, so it was forked again and is now paperless-ngx which is the current iteration of it. It currently has a very strong community and gets good updates.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoPleasantly surprised to see about as many price reductions as price increases. Also funny that they marked up the price of roses ahead of Valentine's Day!
- orev 3y ago> they marked up the price of roses ahead of Valentine's Day! Simple supply/demand.
- dheera 3y agoHas nothing to do with supply curve, it's just that roses on Valentine's Day change from elastic demand to inelastic demand. In simple terms on Valentine's Day they can charge whatever the hell they want and people still want to buy it. At other times of the year people have lots of alternatives to roses and are more price sensitive.
- brianwawok 3y agoWhy is it funny prices rose as demand increases? That’s Econ 101 expected behavior
- graphe 3y agoiPhones dropped in price as demand increased. Demand isn't as important as marketing, and this is probably supply limited rather than demand.
- rnadomvirlabe 3y agoIs this for one store or all stores? It's commendable that you posted your code, but a minimal README would be appreciated. Looking through your code, I see that the default store is Chicago South Loop (701). This would be helpful information to include on the website displaying the results.
- cmoog 3y agoYes, you make a good point. Although I suspect there may be regional differences in price, I haven't yet run the diff on that. Should be simple enough for me to allow the user to select their regional store location.
- crazygringo 3y agoTrader Joe's prices are famously the same across all stores. So that shouldn't be an issue.
- mfarris 3y agoThat's a misconception. Prices are not the same across stores. I live in Los Angeles. Many times I've shopped at the TJ's in Silver Lake and one of the TJ's in Pasadena on the same day. Most prices are the same, but on many items the Silver Lake store is consistently 5-10% higher. I've also shopped in midwestern TJ's and noted that the prices were generally lower than LA. Products differ significantly, too. Items with the exact same name and packaging can be totally different regionally. For example, "Sonoma Chicken Salad" used to be a favorite of mine here in California. The Iowa version was disgusting, with roughly twice the mayonnaise, fewer nuts and grapes, and 3x the sugar.
- genocidicbunny 3y agoI've noticed a similar thing with Trader Joes in PNW vs California. The produce selection was different, the pre-made foods (like the salads, wraps..etc) were somewhat different, meat selection and quality was also different. Part of it is that TJ's used to be much more about the 'one-off buy of a weird but tasty product'. They would find a product they could sell, buy as much of it as was possible, and sell through it, never to order and sell it again. Over time though, it grew to be the store where people went for basic staples, and so the way they sourced products probably changed to a more traditional model that grocery stores use, where many of the more perishable products are regionally sourced. So what you experienced with the Sonoma Chicken Salad (which, I commend your appreciation, that used to be a favourite of mine to get for lunch) is likely a result of them just being completely different products made in different places by different companies. Trader Joes in the 90's and early 2000's was a cool quirky grocery store to pick up some fun stuff and good wine to round out the weekly grocery shopping. TJ's in 2024 feels like Kroger standing on Whole Foods shoulders wearing a trench coat.
- orange_county 3y agoHow are they getting the prices for these? Is this run by Trader Joe’s? I hope someone isn’t manually updating these. Also won’t prices differ by location? So many questions.
- cmoog 3y agoSource code here: https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes Discussion of regional price differences in other comments.
- ElijahLynn 3y agoLooks like it is a GraphQL API from TJs. url <- HTTP.parseRequest "https://www.traderjoes.com/api/graphql" https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/master/Prices.hs#L87 https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/master/Prices.hs#L8...
- traderjoes1fan 3y ago[flagged]
- xur17 3y agoVery cool! It would be neat to be able to click on a product and see a price history graph as well (since it seems like you should have this data your db).
- cmoog 3y agoAgreed. Planning to add that next.
- scarletphoenix 3y agoSome day in the near future, the marketing department will wonder why so many people were curious about all of their products after browsing Organic Ground Beef[0] [0]: https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/ea2da58a84d3a04e28f36270d1ac0e98a5473be7/Prices.hs#L110 https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/ea2da58a84d3a04e28f...
- cmoog 3y agoHaha true. I should fix that.
- dheera 3y agoI mean, it's okay to leave it, (a) it's funny (b) it teaches them a lesson that attempts to track people are futile
- block_dagger 3y agoModern tracking isn't bulletproof, but also not futile.
- tash9 3y agoOr... you could change it to something funnier, like "Pumpkin Body Butter"
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI'd also change it to `Referer`, as that is what Chrome seems to be using. And referrer is set twice!
- _ea1k 3y agoIndeed, he spelled it the right way, which is the wrong way. He should spell it wrong, which is the right way. :) I think it is funny that this misspelling hasn't been fixed after all of these years. It was typo'ed in the original http spec in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer
- cebu 3y agoDo individual stores have any autonomy over their pricing?
- sharkweek 3y agoDidn't work at Trader Joes, but at another grocery chain for a while as a store buyer. I had essentially no control over pricing unless we had a bunch of backstock we had to move quick to avoid expiration. In those cases we had some level of store-level autonomy to "price to move." That being said, it was heavily tracked and if anyone was doing it too much I'm sure there would be consequences of some sort. Besides that, we'd get updates from corporate with a list of new price tags we'd print out any time they changed something (100% with regional fluctuation baked in, but not at a store level).
- hmcq6 3y agoTrader Joe's doesn't franchise. I'm not entirely sure what that means for store autonomy but I know it means less.
- _ea1k 3y agoI see the price change list, but is there a full history for all products? That would be really interesting to see.
- cmoog 3y agoI plan to add that shortly. The data collection model supports it though.
- timcobb 3y agoAre there any collaborative price tracking sites out there?
- jon_adler 3y agoWere you aware of, or tempted by https://datasette.io/ https://datasette.io/ for creating your solution?
- dgrin91 3y agoThis is very fun, I like it. The price history only goes back a few days, is that because this just started or do you only keep a few days of history?
- cmoog 3y agoThanks! That's because it just started. I intend to keep the full history.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 3y agoGiven that these prices are going into a database, I was hoping that you could click on an item and get its pricing over time (not a referral link to the Trade Joes web site).
- bobchadwick 3y agoLooks like they're just straight up links, and not referral links. Pretty sure nobody is earning a commission when someone clicks them.
- cmoog 3y agoI can assure you I am not earning a commission :)
- ChuckMcM 3y agoSorry can't edit it now but you are correct and I wasn't thinking "that" kind of referral :-). Easy to see that interpretation though, will have to remind myself to use "links that reference the product". FWIW cmoog, I think it is pretty cool. I've always felt that good surveillance on retail prices with specific product information (like weight/servings) would be a solid data set for economists and people like me to understand "real" inflation, "greed" inflation, and general product pricing trends.
- SmellTheGlove 3y agoAhem. Referal. :D I love the idea of pricing over time. It seems like things jump around in 50 cent increments quite a bit. Would be interesting to graph it. I wonder if you'd be able to gather enough data before TJ's decides to implement better endpoint security, though. Having tried to do something similar with airline website data, they sure can make it challenging.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoMy radical hack idea was to start an online newspaper and to contract with the local super markets to run a copy of their weekly insert. Fill the paper with local news and collect price data over time which could be marketed as a product to people who were interested in the data. The most appealing part of this hack is that the advertisers weren't the customer, they were the product. :-)
- Ir0nMan 3y agoAt the current price of $0.01 for 9ft, you could buy enough Trader Joe's Felted Wool Garland to wrap around the earth for just $146,000. Not bad!
- Y_Y 3y agoHow festive
- ElijahLynn 3y agoOh my.. useful!!! Now do all the grocery stores!
- marsissippi 3y agoMade a little dashboard of the last couple weeks' changes https://www.julyp.com/shared-widget/018d8a17-fc96-72b3-806f-f6d520452ae0 https://www.julyp.com/shared-widget/018d8a17-fc96-72b3-806f-...
- blast 3y agoI hope not, but this is likely to get C&D'd by the famously secretive TJs.
- tony_cannistra 3y agoHonestly it's wild that they publish live prices online. Can they be _that_ confident that they're under-cutting competitors all the time?
- obmelvin 3y agoI think there are enough grocery apps that it is better to show price data than not. Though I'm certainly baising that off how I shop rather than a general economics / game theory POV. I regularly use the Ralphs app to cross shop while I'm at Trader Joes. They are only 2 minutes walking apart, so I normally start at TJs. However, sometimes I end up at Ralphs first and now having this data it could lead to an unplanned trip to TJs to save a few bucks.
- chx 3y agohttps://minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/02/trader-joes-argues-national-labor-relations-board-is-unconstitutional-and-other-labor-news/ https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/02/trader-joes-argues-... Yes, please, continue to shop at Trade Joe's and subscribe to Spotify. Please.
- groby_b 3y agoThis is shredding close to HNs "please no political battle", but I'll try to take this as neutral as possible. You are suggesting these are stores people should avoid for labor-unfriendly practices. Assuming that people are aligned with you on that value set, I don't think a sarcastic comment without actual recommendations, on a post about a tangentially related project, is going to move any needles. And so, assuming the mods let us live: What are your recommended alternatives to TJs? TJs is, for better a worse, one of the few grocery store options with both decent quality and not entirely ludicrous prices. This project makes it even more enticing, because you can finally look up prices directly and see price history. If there's another store that offers all that, I think a lot of people would be interested, independent of "why".
- clumsysmurf 3y agoPretty sure TJ's has also given us shrinkflation. I suspect the almond-butter bottles have gotten smaller (but same price).
- borbtactics 3y agoTime to wishlist those strawberries
- sva_ 3y agoMight be interesting to track their price per weight as package sizes commonly change these days ('shrinkflation')
- swyx 3y agosurprised to see trader joe's exposes prices via graphql: https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/54588336f3b7a4ce23c66afc4272349eadaccb8f/Prices.hs#L87 https://github.com/cmoog/traderjoes/blob/54588336f3b7a4ce23c... one of the few notable production gql users?
- inferiorhuman 3y agoLucky Supermarkets do as well.
- mortenjorck 3y agoThis caught me completely by surprise. I never would have imagined that a grocery chain, even Trader Joe's, would have a publicly-accessible API endpoint for its current product catalog. I wonder how the author even found the endpoint! Is this at risk of Trader Joe's noticing and moving to require an auth token? I can't imagine the openness being intentional, at least outside that brief period of techno-optimism in the late 2000s where it seemed like everyone was offering data sources to build into your Twitter bot. Possible secondary application: could this GraphQL endpoint potentially be used to determine when a product is being discontinued?
- throwup238 3y agoTrader Joes just doesn’t really compete on price except for a few loss leaders like milk and eggs. Most people I know who go to TJs treat it as their default store because of the shopping experience. The stores are smaller but well staffed, have a well curated and consistent product selection, and are just more pleasant than other grocery stores.
- pinkmuffinere 3y agoI don't have any hard data to add, but on the face of it this just seems wrong. Their cheese is famously good-for-price / cheap-for-quality, and I think their fresh produce is very competitive as well.
- matthewbauer 3y agoI wonder if this could encode unit price as well? It looks like the website will say /32 fl oz or /pound.
- mandeepj 3y agoA search filter would be helpful
- manuelleduc 3y agoOpen food fact recently launched Open Prices (https://prices.openfoodfacts.org/ https://prices.openfoodfacts.org/). It's currently crowd-sourced instead of an automated crawling, but prices are localized in space and time which could lead to intersting results. This will lead to an open database of food product prices.
- matthewbauer 3y agoIt's a neat idea, but I think you need some automation to make it useful over a long period of time. There's a website to do track gas prices, and they just change too much to keep updated.
- bthallplz 3y agoThis is super cool! I'd hoped to build something like this.
- internet101010 3y agoLocalized pricing just adds noise to data. Intermittent updates combined with possibility of input error also creates issues. Retailers that utilize price zones typically have the baseline price that drives the prices for each price zone (e.g. set prices in California to be 10% more than baseline). Getting the baseline price in an automated way is the ideal solution.
- inamberclad 3y agoI've decided to stop patronizing Trader Joe's after they argued that the NLRB is unconstitutional.
- packjc 3y agoIf you don't mind sharing, how do you find their API? I don't understand graphql that well and I've been trying to play with https://www.traderjoes.com/api/graphql https://www.traderjoes.com/api/graphql to no avail. Cool project, github star achieved.
- nostromo 3y agoJust browse the website and look at the requests it makes to their API.
- muhammadusman 3y agoYES! thank you for doing this, I have been curious about some of the stuff I buy often and I felt like over the last year or two, things have climbed in prices a lot compared to the normal inflation price hikes.
- jenningsjason 3y agoThe founder of "Trader Joe's" Joe Coulombe, wrote a memoir. One of the better business books you'll read: https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/9781400225422/becoming-trader-joe/ https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/9781400225422/becomi...
- erikig 3y agoPrices of two dozen roses went up by 50% just in time for St. Valentine's Day.
- wizerno 3y agoIs there something similar for Ralph's or other stores?
- ctrlGsysop 3y agoNice project. Open nodes at stores could help BLS & commercial orgs doing regular price data gathering. I work on supplier pricing dynamics and for commoditized products freeing your pricing data is powerful.
- camhart 3y agoSetup an alert system so I can be alerted when seasonal items are in stock. I need more lebkuchen.
- RSHEPP 3y agoTrader Joe's sells liquor?? Guess I wouldn't know living in Texas. That's surprised me though.
- e40 3y agoWhy? You can’t sell liquor in a grocery store in Texas?
- shiroiuma 3y agoThe US is really bizarre about alcohol, and it varies wildly between states. Many states don't allow liquor sales in grocery stores, and only in either specially-licensed liquor stores, or in state-owned "ABC" (alcoholic beverage control) stores.
- internet101010 3y agoNo. Liquor can only be sold at liquor stores, which close at 9pm Mon-Sat and are closed on Sunday. You also cannot ship liquor from another state. You can, however, import from another country. So if you want some rare bourbon you have to import it from overseas after it has been exported from the US. It's a real catch-22 situation. Or you can enter a lottery at a liquor store, which is often restricted to customers that spend a lot of money annually with that store. Beer and wine can be bought at grocery stores, though on Sunday you cannot buy until at least noon. At 11:45 on a Sunday morning you will often see a few people waiting near the checkout with a cart full of groceries and a 12-pack. It's stupid.
- e40 3y agoWhich is really odd, since Texas is so liberty and free-market minded.
- bordercases 3y agoI would love a directional arrow in the table to indicate prices from day to day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pazimzadeh 3y agoThe $1.99 Dijon mustard is the best bang for the buck for Dijon on the US market. Maybe even cheaper than in France. But where are the cornichons?
- faramarz 3y agoHa! The uptrend towards Valentine’s Day - florals up from $9.99 to $14.99! Really cool, and gives you POV like you’d get with Uber Surge. Is this how retailers hedge and make up for losses elsewhere? I wish we could also know tracked wholesale price.
- __mharrison__ 3y agoWould be much more interested if that data had a date associated with each row...
- gigatexal 3y agoWhere’d the prices come from? Scraping or an api?
- max4c 3y agoIs there a website that does this for all grocery stores?