DEVELOPER SPOTLIGHT
The Grocery List of the Future
Grocery - Smart Shopping List
Plan, shop, cook, repeat
‣ Founder: Conrad Stoll
‣ Mission: To simplify grocery shopping as you move through the store.
‣ App launched: 2016
‣ Team size: 1
‣ Go-to emoji: 🍋
Conrad Stoll wants Grocery to be the only shopping list you’ll ever need.
That’s why the app adapts to your personal shopping style. Its SmartSort feature will recognize, for instance, that you always hit the produce section before moving on to cereal, and it will reorder your list accordingly. You can maintain individual lists for different stores, and because the app integrates seamlessly with Reminders and syncs across all your devices, your lists are always within reach.
“Everyone has different shopping patterns,” says the Austin, Texas–based developer, “and the app has to be able to support them all.”
We talked to Stoll from his office in Austin about life as a solo dev and the killer feature his girlfriend’s dad suggested.
How did you get into the grocery-list business?
I’ve always been into cooking, so I thought, “OK, I have all these Tex-Mex recipes, and I want them in one place where I can curate them and easily add them to a grocery list.” At the time, I was building apps for Apple Watch, and first I made a basic app for checking off items. Once the idea for SmartSorting came along, everything fell into place.
What does Grocery do differently than other list apps?
The goal was an app that could sort all the items on your list, irrespective of what they were. Getting information about how stores are laid out is impossible. For a third-party developer, it’s double impossible. And to get it to work in any store in the world is triple impossible. This way it can work anywhere.
What’s driven Grocery’s evolution?
A lot of feedback comes from friends and family. The feature that lets you move items from one store to another was a request from my girlfriend’s dad. During COVID, a few people wrote in to say that taking your phone out to shop had become less convenient and they wanted to be able to print their list. I was really happy to add that feature.
The feature that lets you move items from one store to another was a request from my girlfriend’s dad.
—Conrad Stoll, Grocery developer
What’s the best part about being a solo dev?
You get to make the app exactly what you want it to be. I’ve been lucky enough in my career to work with a lot of really good teams. But having this as a place where I have total authority is really satisfying.
What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Before I launched Grocery, a friend told me, “Find the reason people use the app. What’s its real value?” Once you find that, continue to make it the best experience you can. There’s always a temptation to add a new feature or try to follow a similar app that has something that maybe you’re missing. Focus on that core of what makes your app awesome.
Grocery is a part of the App Store Small Business Program. If you are a developer and would like to learn more about the program, follow the link below.