Rory Hansen

Now that I’m living on my own, I’m tasked with doing my own grocery shopping each week. While my weekly purchase is fairly small (a few pieces of fruit, some meat, and lots of prepared foods), I find that I rarely get to take advantage of the deals that are available at the supermarkets. So, instead of buying the bulk peanut butter, I buy the mini jar. Or, I buy one or two buns, rather than a dozen. Or I get the pack of 12 rolls of toilet paper rather than the 36-roll pack. In doing so, I don’t get the same cost-per-item deals that most families would take advantage of.

At the same time, I realize that in my apartment building, there are probably many other young, single professionals like myself that are facing the same dilemma. A possible solution: create a website which allows singles living near each other to find each other and share grocery and supply lists.

Don’t need a full bag of sugar or salt or pepper or any other seasoning or spice? Log into the website, find people in your area that are looking for the same ingredients (with hooks into Google Maps for convenience), and see if they’d like to share.

Understandably, we’re often just talking about fractions of dollars here, but to help with that, make the website credit-based. For example, I buy $10 worth of credits and when I need some salt, I pay $0.25 for a few tablespoons worth and that credit is then dropped into the supplier’s (ie. one of my neighbours) account (with the site taking a small margin).

As the site would be completely localized to the various parts of each city, there’s a great opportunity for local grocers to advertise (coupons, ads, etc.) through the site and target residents that live in the surrounding areas.

Thoughts?