A few years back, Josh Shang’s family faced the kitchen table dilemma many Canadian households know too well: grocery bills climbing faster than wages. As a University of Waterloo student watching his mother meticulously comb through flyers each week, Shang saw not just a family challenge but a technological opportunity.
“My mom would spend hours every weekend cutting coupons and planning meals around sales,” Shang told me during our conversation at a Cambridge coffee shop. “I kept thinking there had to be a better way.”
That better way has materialized as Grocery+, an artificial intelligence application that’s helping hundreds of Canadian families trim their food budgets by an average of 23%. The app, developed in Shang’s Waterloo dorm room over eight months, scans local store flyers, identifies the best deals, and generates meal plans around sale items.
The timing couldn’t be more relevant. According to Statistics Canada’s latest Consumer Price Index, food prices have increased 5.6% year-over-year, outpacing general inflation. The average Canadian family is now spending nearly $15,000 annually on groceries – a figure that’s risen by almost $1,100 since 2022.
“When I started building this, I wasn’t thinking about launching a startup,” explains Shang, who’s pursuing a double major in computer science and economics. “I just wanted to help my mom save time and money.”
What began as a personal project has evolved into something much larger. Grocery+ now monitors pricing at major Canadian retailers including Loblaws, Metro, Walmart, and No Frills, with plans to add smaller regional chains. The app uses machine learning algorithms to understand user preferences, dietary restrictions, and buying patterns to customize recommendations.
Dr. Fatima Hussain, associate professor of consumer economics at Ryerson University, sees Shang’s creation as part of an emerging trend. “We’re entering an era where AI can meaningfully impact household finances at the micro level,” she explains. “Applications like this democratize the benefits of artificial intelligence for everyday financial decisions.”
The technology works by analyzing thousands of products across multiple stores, identifying the optimal combination of retailers for a given shopping list. Users can set parameters like driving distance, dietary preferences, and brand loyalty. The app then generates a personalized shopping route that maximizes savings while minimizing travel time.
Emily Rodriguez, a Cambridge mother of three who has been using Grocery+ for two months, credits the app with reducing her family’s monthly food spending from $1,200 to roughly $900. “Before this, I was totally overwhelmed trying to keep track of all the deals,” Rodriguez says. “Now I just input what we need, and it tells me exactly where to shop and what to buy.”
The technical innovation behind Grocery+ reflects a growing trend of applying sophisticated AI to everyday consumer problems. Shang’s application uses optical character recognition to extract pricing information from digital flyers, natural language processing to categorize products, and reinforcement learning to improve recommendations over time.
“The most challenging part was building a system that could recognize and categorize products across different retailers who all format their data differently,” Shang explains. His solution was to train the algorithm on thousands of product images and descriptions, teaching it to understand that “Grade A Large Eggs” at one store is the same as “Large White Eggs” at another.
Beyond immediate savings, Grocery+ incorporates sustainability features that align with growing consumer concerns about food waste. The app suggests recipes that utilize ingredients approaching their expiration date and recommends appropriate purchase quantities based on household size.
This attention to reducing waste has attracted notice from environmental organizations. GreenTable Canada, a non-profit focused on sustainable food systems, recently highlighted Grocery+ in their quarterly newsletter, noting that “tools that help consumers make financially sound choices often lead to environmentally sound choices as well.”
The app’s growth has been entirely organic, spreading through word-of-mouth in community Facebook groups and local parent networks. Shang has deliberately avoided traditional venture capital, instead financing development through a small grant from the University of Waterloo’s Velocity startup program and his personal savings.
“I’ve had interest from investors, but right now I’m focused on improving the product rather than scaling quickly,” he says. This approach stands in contrast to the growth-at-all-costs mentality that dominates much of the tech startup world, particularly in AI.
The app currently operates on a freemium model, with basic functionality available at no cost and advanced features—like automatic meal planning and pantry inventory tracking—available for $4.99 monthly. Approximately 30% of users have converted to paid subscribers, providing Shang with sustainable revenue to continue development.
Grocery+’s emergence comes at a time when Canadians are increasingly looking for technological solutions to economic pressures. A recent RBC survey found that 68% of Canadians are actively seeking new ways to reduce household expenses, with food costs being a primary concern.
“What makes Josh’s application particularly valuable is that it addresses a universal need,” says Michael Chen, director of the Center for Retail Innovation at the University of Alberta. “Everyone buys groceries, and everyone wants to save money. The addressable market is essentially every household in Canada.”
Despite the app’s success, Shang remains grounded about both its limitations and potential. “This isn’t going to solve food insecurity or fix structural problems in our food supply chains,” he acknowledges. “But it can help families stretch their dollars further, and that matters right now.”
As inflation continues to challenge household budgets across Canada, innovations like Grocery+ represent a promising intersection of technology and practical economics. For Josh Shang, what began as a son’s attempt to help his mother save time and money has evolved into a tool that’s helping hundreds of families navigate the weekly challenge of putting affordable, nutritious food on their tables.
The next time you’re standing in a grocery aisle wondering if there’s a better deal elsewhere, the answer might just be in an app created by a Waterloo student who wanted to make his mom’s life a little easier.
