The Spoon’s North Star during this time of pandemic has been ‘how can we be of use?’ Well, you’d be hard-pressed to find something more useful for a nation desperately searching for toilet paper and bread flour than the Relish Stock Checker.
Launched today by Relish, an online meal planning and grocery shopping tool owned by Fexy Media, the Relish Stock Checker is a free tool to help you locate 50 of the hardest-to-find grocery staples (think: paper towels, pasta, sugar, canned beans, etc.) at nearby Targets and Walmarts. Just enter your zip code and the Relish Stock Checker will help you see which store locations in your area have these items in stock.
While stores are returning to normal after a bout of pandemic-induced panic shopping, there are still empty shelves for many of the staples people need to stock up on. In a time when actually going to a grocery store can potentially expose you to others with COVID-19, knowing ahead of time if a store has the item you need can help reduce risk by cutting wasted trips.
We don’t know how up-to-date the Relish Stock Checker is (Relish is tied into Walmart and Target’s APIs because of its shoppable recipes). Even Walmart and Target’s websites can be out of date by the time you actually get to the store. But at least Relish is providing some indication of available stock, and lets you aggregate results from both Walmart and Target without having to go to their sites individually.
The other bummer, if we can even call it that in these crazy times, is that Relish Stock Checker only works with Target and Walmart. In the press announcement, the company says that it will be adding more locations and grocery items in the coming weeks. There will even be a module where shoppers can submit suggestions for items they want to find.
Once the company does that, the Relish Stock Checker will be even more useful.
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