Beelion App

My wife and I were getting frustrated with going to the grocery store frequently. We were spending more than we intended and kept forgetting items we hadn’t added to the list. We were going down aisles we didn’t need and were buying food we didn’t want.

After a particularly bad week, we thought about trying several different grocery apps. They helped a little bit, but none of the available apps had all the features we wanted. I decided we shouldn’t settle.

Features

• Responsive web app
• Self organizing stores
• Meal planning interface
• Built with Javascript
• Flexible backend

Solution

I implemented a MeteorJS application with a Bootstrap front-end framework. Meteor leverages MongoDB which allows for a flexible backend. I was able to rapidly iterate the project and discover more features we wanted as my wife and I used it.

One of the most important features is the ability to have sorted grocery lists. Each grocery store has a different layout and if you have a large list you can miss items. An optimised list specific to the grocery store you are at helps reduce missing items and aisles.

The sorted list became cumbersome to complete each time you visited a new grocery store. I developed an algorithm that sorts a grocery store each time the user completes a shopping trip at the store. This helps ensure that each successive weekly shop is more efficient.

Results

Beelion changed the way we do our shopping. We are able to completely avoid aisles which has drastically reduced our impulse buys and sped up our weekly shop. It is now a rare occasion that we forget something from our shopping list.

Meal planning can be completed at your laptop or tablet helping reduce missed items. If you remember something that needs to be added to your shopping list, you can add it from the web app right away.