Being stuck in a grocery store without a clue about where the items on your grocery list are located can be frustrating.
But Bill Kelley, a University music school recording studio engineer, has developed a Web site to resolve this problem.
The Web site, www.easyshoppinglist.com, features 18 grocery stores from Baton Rouge and Gonzalez and is designed to show consumers where products in each grocery store are located.
Winn Dixie, Albertsons, Wal-Mart and Calandro’s are among the featured grocery stores on the site.
Consumers choose the store they will visit and then choose the items they plan to buy.
After selecting items, the consumer clicks on a finish button, and a page appears listing all the items the consumer selected along with the aisle they are on in the store.
Kelley said his idea came from countless adventures to the grocery store with no idea where products were.
Kelli Kelley, Bill’s wife, would give him a list of items she needed and also provided where the items were located in the store.
After Kelley and his wife bought a computer, he began compiling a list of grocery store information.
“I had to do it,” Kelley said. “It’s really not what I want to be doing with my time, but I just find myself driven to make it.”
Kelley said each store takes him about two and a half hours to walk around and determine where items are located.
Kelley used a sheet outlining the items then walked down the aisles and wrote each aisle next to the corresponding food item.
Paula Gremillion, systems analyst for Louisiana Department of Social Services and an easyshoppinglist.com user, said the Web site is perfect for people with little time to shop.
“Our everyday lives are so busy, especially for us moms who typically do the majority of grocery shopping and do not enjoy it,” Gremillion said. “If there is a way to save time to accomplish a necessary task more efficiently, then why not?”
Kelley said some people may view his Web site as just another “lazy people” invention.
But Fred Dent, a local investments manager, said the Web site is just another tool to provide consumers with a valuable service.
“[The site is] no more lazy than a person who stops at the gas station to get a map to his destination rather than roaming the roads in futility,” Dent said.
Kelley funds the site himself. He hopes to rent the site out to large grocers in the future.
Kelley said he already has contacted a few local grocers about possible partnerships, but they have denied all of his requests.
Kelley thinks the negative feedback is because grocers expect people to make impulse purchases when they get lost in stores.
But Kelley said his Web site also will attract the impulse buy.
“If people are looking at the site they may stumble upon something they forgot about,” Kelley said.
Gremillion said the time consumers save on shopping could benefit grocers.
“I think that it would give more time for customers to peruse throughout the store for the things they want, rather than have to spend time looking for the things that they know they need to shop for,” Gremillion said.
Kelley said he constantly receives positive e-mails from Easy Shopping List users and so far has received more than 3,300 visitors to the site since November 2000.
New updates are expected to be posted on July 1 when Baton Rouge area Home Depots and Lowes are added to the site. “One thing about Home Depot that upsets me is that they do not put up any aisle numbers in the store,” Kelley said. “They want you to be lost. So very soon they are going to have aisle numbers whether they want it or not.”
Kelley said the home improvement stores probably will be his last on the site.
“I can’t think of any other places that I go to where I am lost looking for something,” Kelley said.