How it started and how it's going.
Costco! If you're in the US or Canada, you definitely know this place. Think low prices, bulk buys, high-quality stuff, and yeah, packed aisles on the weekends. Shopping at Costco can feel like a marathon, especially on a Saturday afternoon when finding a parking spot can eat up a chunk of your day.
Centra supermarket has Chinese roots, and the receipts list products in both English and Chinese. My image parsing software doesn't recognize Chinese, so we stick with the English. But that’s not the only tricky part. Sometimes the product descriptions are so long they spill over onto the next line, and the software gets confused, mixing up prices.
Ever feel like your grocery bills are climbing faster than you can keep up? That was my reality in 2023, prompting me to take matters into my own hands. Frustrated with existing apps that didn't quite cut it, I embarked on a journey to develop a custom solution to track, categorize, and optimize our family's food spending.