Changelog
What's new with Sacramento's grocery price comparison site.
39
stores
109,000+
products
13
categories
Mar 6 — Search, Data Quality & More
New Feature
Store selection in shopping list — pick which store to buy each item from right in the comparison view. Your choices are saved and remembered on return visits with a structured list view showing your plan at a glance.
New Feature
My Picks vs Optimized modes — two tabs on the comparison page: "My Picks" shows your selected stores with total cost, "Optimized" shows the cheapest possible assignment with savings diff. Premium users get full route planning with gas costs in both modes.
New Feature
Autocomplete search — type-ahead product search with instant dropdown results on every page. Finds matching products as you type, showing the best matches from across all stores.
New Feature
Premium landing page redesign — revamped /premium with 6 feature cards (sync, smart list, price history, account sharing, community support), coming soon roadmap (multiple lists, price alerts, deal digest, recipe calculator), interactive pricing, and login/account management for subscribers.
Improvement
Shopping list workflow clarified — renamed buttons to "Find Products" → "Confirm Matches" → "Compare Prices" so each step is clear. Removed confusing star/favorite buttons from the match stage.
Improvement
Premium list sync includes store selections — store choices now sync to the cloud for premium users, so your shopping plan follows you across devices.
Improvement
New site footer — organized three-column footer with Browse, Premium, and Info sections replacing the old single-line footer.
Improvement
Privacy policy updated — added sections for cookies, data hosting (Cloudflare), email provider (Resend), account sharing policy, and auto-reply disclosures.
Improvement
Login page context — shows explanatory message when redirected from premium page, so new users understand the signup flow.
New Feature
Add to shopping list from any page — tap the + button next to any product to add it to your shopping list. Tap once to confirm, twice to add. Works on the homepage, store pages, and category pages. Badge counter on the nav shows how many items are queued.
New Feature
Package sizes on 48,000+ products — products now show their actual size (16 oz, 750 ml, 12 pk) instead of just "each." Extracted from Foods Co structured API data and parsed from product names across all stores. Makes it easier to tell apart different sizes of the same product and compare prices.
Data Quality
Fixed 20,000+ product categorizations — rewrote category detection to fix ice cream showing up in dairy, ground coffee in meat, sausage in pantry, and thousands of other misplacements. Products are now sorted into the right aisles.
Data Quality
Essentials expanded from 15 to 70 products — the Essentials filter now covers all categories: produce, dairy, meat, pantry, bakery, beverages, snacks, frozen, household, and alcohol. Products available at 5+ stores are automatically included.
Improvement
Alphabetical product sorting — products are now sorted alphabetically by name across all views. Essentials and All both use the same clean A-Z ordering, making it easier to find what you're looking for.
Improvement
SEO improvements across all pages — better page titles and descriptions with Sacramento keywords, structured data (Product offers, ItemList, WebApplication schemas) for richer Google search results.
Infrastructure
Migrated to Cloudflare Pages — site now served from Cloudflare's edge network for faster load times worldwide. Replaced legacy Apache config with Cloudflare caching headers.
Mar 5 — Weekly Specials via Flipp
Flipp weekly specials integration
Weekly ad sale prices are now collected from 12 Sacramento stores simultaneously via Flipp's flyer data, covering all major weekly circulars in one automated pass.
1,073 weekly specials collected across 12 stores
Store Data
Total Wine & More full catalog — 13,782 products added from Sacramento Arden store: 6,589 wines, 5,271 spirits, 1,919 beers. Largest single-store catalog in the database.
New Feature
Flipp weekly specials integration — weekly ad sale prices are now collected from 12 stores simultaneously via Flipp's flyer data, covering all major Sacramento weekly circulars in a single automated pass.
Store Data
Safeway weekly specials — 188 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Save Mart weekly specials — 133 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Raley's weekly specials — 133 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Target weekly specials — 123 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Foods Co weekly specials — 102 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Smart & Final weekly specials — 74 sale prices collected.
Store Data
Grocery Outlet weekly specials — 72 sale prices collected. First time tracking this store's weekly ad.
Store Data
Sam's Club weekly specials — 59 sale prices collected. First time tracking this store's weekly ad.
Store Data
Costco weekly specials — 43 sale prices collected. First time tracking this store's weekly ad.
Store Data
Walmart prices — 86 products added from weekly specials and website catalog. First time tracking this store.
Store Data
Sprouts weekly specials — 36 sale prices collected.
Store Data
FoodMaxx weekly specials — 24 sale prices collected.
Improvement
SEO and discoverability improvements — added robots.txt, llms.txt for AI bots, FAQ rich results schema, breadcrumb navigation and schema on store and category pages, GroceryStore structured data on all 39 store pages, geo meta tags, and fixed sitemap accuracy.
New Feature
Premium subscriptions launched — passwordless login via magic link, premium price history and smart shopping list now behind a $2.99/month or $24.99/year subscription via Stripe.
Infrastructure
Prices collected: 1,073 across 12 stores
Mar 4 — Automated Email Pipeline
Forward an email, update the site
Store weekly ad emails are now automatically processed end-to-end — forwarded emails trigger price extraction, database import, and site deployment without any manual steps.
Raley's, Nugget, and Sprouts verified and running
New Feature
Weekly ad email pipeline — store weekly ad emails are now automatically processed: prices collected, imported, and published without manual intervention.
Store Data
Sprouts full catalog — 5,486 products updated including 1,899 sale prices via automated pipeline.
Store Data
Raley's weekly ad — 131 sale prices updated via email pipeline.
Store Data
Nugget Markets weekly specials — 132 products updated via email pipeline.
Bug Fix
Category filtering fixed — selecting categories like Beverages, Baby, or Frozen on the homepage now loads the correct products instead of showing "No products found."
Prices collected: 5,749 across 3 stores
+− Show older entries
Mar 3 — Weekly Ads & Freshness
Weekly ad coverage goes wide
Sale prices from weekly circulars now updated across 10+ stores every week — Sprouts, Safeway, Raley's, FoodMaxx, Nugget, Smart & Final, Foods Co, Save Mart, and more.
10,000+ weekly sale prices tracked across Sacramento
New Feature
Color-coded price freshness — every price now shows its age with a color-coded badge. Under 30 days is fresh, 30-60 days shows an amber "aging" tag, 60-90 days is orange "stale", and 90+ days is red "outdated." Expired sale items clearly show "was $X on sale" with the end date so you know the deal has passed.
Store Data
Oto's Marketplace weekly specials — 38 sale prices from Sacramento's beloved Japanese market.
Store Data
Rancho San Miguel weekly ad — 78 products from this popular Hispanic grocery, including produce, meat, and pantry deals.
Store Data
Sprouts weekly ad refresh — 23 new sale prices for Mar 4-10 including produce, meat, and bulk items.
Store Data
Foods Co full catalog — 13,924 prices across all departments, including 1,372 sale items.
Store Data
Target full catalog — 13,187 prices with 1,981 on sale including Target Circle deals.
Store Data
FoodMaxx full catalog — 12,844 prices across all departments, 3,191 on sale.
Store Data
Safeway full catalog — 10,583 prices with 4,230 sale items from weekly deals and club card specials.
Store Data
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op — 9,216 prices from Sacramento's community-owned grocery.
Store Data
Smart & Final full catalog — 8,146 prices with 1,126 on sale across grocery and bulk departments.
Store Data
Sprouts full catalog — 5,971 prices with 2,011 on sale from produce to bulk items.
Store Data
Raley's full catalog — 4,886 prices with 1,322 on sale including member deals.
Store Data
Whole Foods full catalog — 4,658 prices with 620 on sale, plus Amazon affiliate links on every product.
Store Data
99 Ranch Market full catalog — 1,636 prices across beverages, snacks, noodles, deli, sauces, and dry goods.
Store Data
Nugget Markets weekly specials — 136 sale prices from this week's circular.
Improvement
About page redesigned — now showcases all features with a playful, Sacramento-proud tone. Feature cards, live stats, freshness guide, how-it-works flow, and store coverage breakdown.
Improvement
Contextual tips across all pages — subtle inline hints help you discover features like chip filtering, recipe parsing, product comparison, and more.
Improvement Shopping list now links to Smart List for route optimization instead of the old experimental route planner
Improvement
Better email submission feedback — price photo submissions now get helpful auto-replies explaining what happened and tips for best results.
Improvement
More accurate price history — tightened product matching so price history charts show the right product at each store, not unrelated variants mixed together.
Improvement
Smarter price history — duplicate entries where the same store had the same price on different dates are now collapsed into a single entry showing the most recent date. Products with no meaningful price variation are hidden from the explorer.
Improvement
Better product matching in Smart List — each item now shows a rich card with the price range across stores, the 3 cheapest stores with prices, and an expandable list of alternative products you can tap to switch. Previously it was a tiny dropdown that was easy to miss.
Bug Fix
Smart Shopping List loads correctly — fixed "Failed to load data" error that prevented the optimizer from working. Store distance data was missing from deployment.
Bug Fix
Google Maps routes go to the right place — route links now include the store name (e.g. "FoodMaxx, 3547 Bradshaw Rd") so Maps navigates to the actual business, not just a street address.
Data Quality
Cleaned up 8,000+ product names — fixed garbled brand names from store APIs: double apostrophes (Johnson''s → Johnson's), bracket-wrapped wine brands ([yellow tail] → Yellow Tail), stray commas between brand and product (1800 , Tequila → 1800 Tequila), and orphaned possessives. All converters updated to prevent recurrence.
Infrastructure Streamlined weekly data collection process for consistent price updates from community contributions
Prices collected: 85,197 across 12 stores (Foods Co, Target, FoodMaxx, Safeway, Sac Co-op, Smart & Final, Sprouts, Raley's, Whole Foods, 99 Ranch, Nugget, Save Mart)
Mar 2 — Premium & Polish
Premium price history dashboard launched
Browse price trends for any product with interactive charts. See how prices have changed over time across every store we track.
Every product with 2+ price records gets a history chart
Smart shopping list optimizer
Enter your grocery list, get optimized multi-store routes that save you the most money — with real driving distances and gas cost estimates.
Compares single-store, 2-store, and 3-store splits automatically
New Feature
Recipe ingredient parsing — paste a recipe and we'll find matching grocery products. Handles fractions, cooking units (cups, tbsp, lbs), and modifiers like "diced" or "chopped."
Store Data
Alcohol price tracking — Total Wine & More and BevMo! added with 25 baseline products across wine, spirits, and beer.
Store Data
Whole Foods alcohol department — 1,080 wine, beer, and spirits products added.
Improvement Desktop drag-to-scroll and fade indicators for filter chip rows
Improvement Documentation and data quality improvements
Infrastructure Real driving distance calculations via OSRM routing engine for 15 Sacramento neighborhoods
Prices collected: 5,214 across 4 stores (Whole Foods, Nugget, Costco, Raley's)
Mar 1 — Scale
Big-box stores and weekly ad tracking arrive
Target's full grocery catalog goes live with 11,680 prices, and weekly circulars from 7+ stores start flowing in automatically so sale prices show up within days of publication.
12,500+ prices collected across 9 stores in one day
New Feature
Weekly ad integration — sale prices from 7+ store circulars updated weekly, so deals show up fast.
Store Data
Target full catalog added — 11,680 prices across all grocery departments.
Store Data
Nugget Markets weekly specials — 136 sale prices from their current circular.
Infrastructure Improved data accuracy and update frequency across all stores
Infrastructure Multi-session development workflow for complex features
Prices collected: 12,572 across 9 stores (Target, Whole Foods, Grocery Outlet, Save Mart, and 5 more via weekly ads)
Feb 28 — Features & Data Explosion
Shopping list launched
Paste your grocery list, compare prices across all stores instantly. Favorites, persistent storage, and smart matching make it faster every time you use it.
New Feature
Community email submissions — neighbors can email price photos to prices@sacgroceries.com. Auto-replies confirm receipt, and prices get imported after review.
New Feature
Expandable product cards — replaced the old comparison table with cards that work much better on mobile.
Store Data
Safeway full catalog — 10,681 products across all grocery departments.
Store Data
Smart & Final full catalog — 8,134 products including bulk grocery, frozen, and produce.
Store Data
Sprouts full catalog — 5,610 products across produce, grocery aisles, dairy, and frozen.
Store Data
Raley's full catalog — 4,881 products from Sacramento's hometown grocer.
Improvement Accessibility improvements — better Buy button visibility, keyboard navigation, and WCAG 2.2 AA compliance
Improvement Loyalty program badges on store pages
Improvement Amazon Fresh removed (nationwide closure Jan 2026)
Improvement Favorites and localStorage for persistent shopping lists
Prices collected: 47,816 across 5 stores (Foods Co, FoodMaxx, Safeway, Sprouts, Raley's)
Feb 27 — Rapid Expansion
30+ stores now tracked across Sacramento
From WinCo to Whole Foods, discount to premium — if Sacramento shops there, we track it.
9 new stores added in a single day
New Feature
Homepage pagination — renders 100 products instantly, loads the rest on demand. Fast even on budget phones.
Store Data
Foods Co full catalog — 13,926 prices. The largest single-store import yet.
Store Data
FoodMaxx full catalog — 12,732 prices across all departments.
Store Data
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op — 8,431 prices from Sacramento's beloved community-owned grocery.
Store Data
Sprouts weekly sale prices — 71 sale prices across produce, meat, and bulk.
Store Data
Raley's 3-day sale prices — 11 sale prices from the current 3-day promotion.
Store Data
FoodMaxx weekly flyer prices — 58 sale prices from the current weekly circular.
Prices collected: 11,018 across 4 stores (99 Ranch, Sac Co-op, Whole Foods, Raley's)
Feb 26 — Launch Day
SacGroceries goes live
Free grocery price comparison for Sacramento, CA. Compare prices across local stores, find the best deals, save money on your weekly shop.
Day one: already tracking prices at multiple stores
New Feature
Side-by-side price comparison — see every store's price for a product on one screen. Search, filter by category, sort by price.
New Feature
Individual store pages and category browsing — dedicated pages for each store and product category.
Store Data
Trader Joe's complete catalog — 745 prices across 5 departments.
Store Data
99 Ranch Market — 1,775 prices from Sacramento's go-to Asian grocery.
Store Data
Whole Foods Market — 801 prices added on launch day.
Infrastructure Automated deployment — push to main, site updates in minutes
Infrastructure SEO foundations — structured data, sitemap, social sharing metadata
Built with care for Sacramento by Michael Kahn.
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