Grocery IQ

Developer: Free State Labs, LLC
Category: Lifestyle
Version: 1.5
Release Date: July 22, 2009
Size: 8.6 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating 8/10

Lost in the deluge of make-a-list applications out there is the fact that some of them are almost worth the money. Take Grocery IQ, for example. Its recent update has improved on the original idea and created a grocery-list app that works almost as well as pen and paper.

Grocery IQ is a grocery list, allowing you to make a list at home and tick off items when you put them in your cart -- a task more easily done undigitally, on the surface. But Grocery IQ takes it a step further, allowing you to customize the list by category, then organizing your categories by the order in which you walk through the store. So all of your fruits and vegetables are listed under "produce," all your dairy under "dairy and cheese," and so on. This seems like a small thing, unless you're grocery challenged like myself, and have spent the better part of an hour racing across the store to pick up something in an aisle I forgot.

In its latest update, Grocery IQ allows you to include lists for multiple stores. Once again, it seems silly on the surface, until you realize you want to hit Trader Joe's for bread and produce and the mass-market grocery for cat litter and ball park franks, and suddenly it gets a lot more useful. Maintain your lists during the week, then purge them on shopping day. Grocery IQ remembers your lists, and maintains a list of "favorites" that you like.

This is more of a personal-preference app for me. It doesn't do anything you can't do with pen and paper, but I like having an organized grocery list with me at all times just in case I get inspired. They were just bought by coupons.com, so there's the clear expectation that this app will eventually save you more than its purchase price. And at 99¢, it ain't much to try and see if you like it.