traderjoes

Data

price tracking

SHOW HN2024

274points
147comments
#245of 3,515 in 2024
Top 7%of 2024 by points

How HN took it

LovedMost comments that take a side are positive

14 positive, 36 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 52 comments about the project. Thread score +0.20.

Idea: 5 for, 0 againstPricing: 3 for, 0 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun, useful project for tracking grocery prices

    From 3 comments
    • This 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?
      dgrin91 on HN
    • YES! 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…
      muhammadusman on HN
    • Oh my.. useful!!! Now do all the grocery stores!
      ElijahLynn on HN
  • Interest in tracking other grocery stores

    From 3 comments
    • Oh my.. useful!!! Now do all the grocery stores!
      ElijahLynn on HN
    • Is there something similar for Ralph's or other stores?
      wizerno on HN
    • Is there a website that does this for all grocery stores?
      max4c on HN

Objections

  • Prices only reflect one Chicago store; regional differences unknown

    From 2 comments
    • Good catch. These prices are hard coded to my local store in Chicago. Soon I will add support for selecting your local store.
      cmoog on HN
    • Yes, 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…
      cmoog on HN
  • Hard to find items due to random ordering

    From 1 comment
    • This 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?
      dtgriscom on HN

Requests

  • Per-item price history graphs

    From 3 comments
    • Very 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).
      xur17 on HN
    • Given 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).
      ChuckMcM on HN
    • I see the price change list, but is there a full history for all products? That would be really interesting to see.
      jsight on HN
  • Store location selection

    From 2 comments
    • Yes, 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…
      cmoog on HN
    • Good catch. These prices are hard coded to my local store in Chicago. Soon I will add support for selecting your local store.
      cmoog on HN
  • Search and sort filters

    From 2 comments
    • A search filter would be helpful
      mandeepj on HN
    • This 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?
      dtgriscom on HN
  • Unit price tracking

    From 2 comments
    • I wonder if this could encode unit price as well? It looks like the website will say /32 fl oz or /pound.
      matthewbauer on HN
    • Might be interesting to track their price per weight as package sizes commonly change these days ('shrinkflation')
      sva_ on HN

Questions

  • How prices are collected: scraping or API

    From 2 comments
    • How 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.
      orange_county on HN
    • Where’d the prices come from? Scraping or an api?
      gigatexal on HN
  • Whether prices differ by store location

    From 2 comments
    • This implies the prices are the same across all TJs stores - is that the case?
      rconti on HN
    • How 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.
      orange_county on HN

Alternatives named

  • Open Prices by Open Food Facts

    From 1 comment
    • Open food fact recently launched Open Prices (https://prices.openfoodfacts.org/). It's currently crowd-sourced instead of an automated crawling, but prices are localized in space…
      manuelleduc on HN
  • Datasette

    From 1 comment
    • Were you aware of, or tempted by https://datasette.io/ for creating your solution?
      jon_adler on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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