The Bare Necessities

Eight years ago, father-of-four Gerald Buckley froze outside his local grocery store. The trip to stock up on diapers and baby food had been an expensive one. He swooned at the dollar amount printed at the bottom of his receipt.

He's not the only dad in the U.S. to have the breath knocked out of him by a long strip of white paper from the grocery store. The average American family-of-four spends about $8,500 per year on food and groceries--that's about $700 per month. The kicker is that food prices rose four percent last year, and they're expected to do the same this year.

Got an extra $30 bucks this month? Many consumers don't, including the 8.5 percent of Americans living on unemployment right now.

Buckley knew there had to be a better way.

He took a cue from the comparison-shopping craze sparked by sites like Travelocity.com, and now he's in the middle of the launch process for Grocio.com, the culmination of years of work on a market-ready, user-friendly, grocery price comparison search engine. The site identifies the least expensive, local check-outs based on users' grocery lists. Grocio.com also matches digital coupons to items on those lists, compounding the savings reaped by users. So far, it's the only site of its kind slated to hit the Web.

"We're saving people lots of money and a fair bit of time. They don't have to go hunting for coupons anymore," Buckley said.

The Grocio.com concept has come a long way since 2001. Last year it wowed the panel at the 2008 Mayor's Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards in Tulsa, garnering $30K in start-up funding. The spoils of that win were doubled when Buckley qualified for a matching fund award from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST for short).

Buckley brought his sixty grand in good, solid, non-equity funding --the entrepreneur's favorite kind of start-up cash--back to Tulsa to make headway toward this spring, the long-anticipated timeframe in which he has aimed to launch Grocio.com at the national level.

About 2,000 households are already registered on the site, and Buckley opened Grocio.com to 1,500 Oklahoma beta testers April 7. Now the Grocio team is working down the list of changes suggested by testers. Buckley wants to launch the site within the next several weeks.

All this about Grocio.com sounds great, right? Already considering how much you'd be willing to pay for such a service? Put the wads of cash you've saved from what you've learned about budgeting and repurposing old clothes and hocking jewelry with bad juju by reading this column back in the mattress, because Grocio.com will be at your service free of charge.

When the day finally comes that Grocio.com is alive and well despite its servers being pelted to hell by eager shoppers with strangled grocery budgets, entering one's zip code on the homepage will return a list of local participating grocers. The user can choose to compare prices at them all, or cherry-pick a few. Next, the user creates a shopping list.

After that, buggy-pushers-gone-Web-jockeys can get lost in the vortex and wonder of comparison shopping for groceries online, without ever moving their butts out of their recliners except maybe to grab a beer. Don't forget to add that to the grocery list, by the way.

Because the pricing shown on Grocio.com comes directly from the grocers, it's always as accurate as the price listed on the shelf.

"We don't have any reliance on people telling us what the prices are," Buckley said. "So, the prices are always correct--that's very important."

The end result? A swing of up to $20 between a grocery bill from the most expensive grocer to the least, according to Buckley. When digital coupon matching kicks in, Grocio.com users see their savings grow even more.

"The average savings is going to be about $30, total, on a grocery bill of about $120," Buckley said. "You can knock 20-25 percent off your grocery bill with this tool."

Though Buckley couldn't disclose the total number of grocers signed up with Grocio.com, "it's going to be really shocking, not only the number of Tulsa grocers, but the number of grocers nationwide," Buckley said. "The national footprint we've managed to build will, I think, cause people to say, 'How did you do that?'"

Until it goes live, keep tabs on Grocio.com on Twitter at www.twitter.com/grocio and on the Grocio Facebook group at www.facebook.com.

While you're at it, take some of Buckley's advice for slimming down that grocery bill that, like some of the rest of us, could do with fewer Hostess cakes:

- To start, make a list before heading to the grocery store.

"Then, stick to it -- don't buy anything that's not on that list," Buckley said. "The impulse items kill."

- Practice what your Zen teacher taught you and be mindful of what hops in the grocery cart.

"Be aware of what it is that you're buying," Buckley said. "Be aware of the pricing. Are there pricing cycles to be aware of? Milk is expensive at this time of year -- what about flour, cereal, sugar and other staples?"

- Here's a big duh: "Never, ever, ever" shop when you're hungry.

"That's basic blocking and tackling," Buckley said.

- If you go to the grocery store with your kids, you might as well go to the grocery store after a few shots at the corner bar.

"Don't take the kids if you can manage it," Buckley said, "because the distraction impairs your ability to make wise purchasing decisions. It gets very expensive when you're kid is whining, 'Mom or Dad, can I have this?' It gets crazy."

- Speaking of kids, an easy way to pay for their allowances is to put them on coupon-clipping duty.

"They're actually earning what they're saving," Buckley said. "Plus, it's fun, and it gets the kids involved. It teaches them the value of saving and of money. They realize, 'Wow, I didn't know cereal cost more than 50 cents.'"

- Toss the Kraft and Land O' Lakes and cozy up to Best Choice and Always Save.

"Often there are store labels that are the same thing as the leading brand," Buckley said. "If someone isn't tied to a particular brand, he or she can save a lot of money."