How prices work
Where the numbers come from
The total CartCraft shows is not a receipt. It is the best number we can put on a basket before you walk in, and this is exactly how it is made.
Three passes
A catalog, a market, a basket.
A catalog, written by hand
Every ingredient the recipes use has a shelf price at each of the 47 chains, held as a national figure and written by us. Not pulled from a retailer: the ones that publish prices forbid comparing them against other stores, which is the one thing CartCraft exists to do.
Adjusted to where you live
Share a location and CartCraft blends the four nearest metro areas we have sampled, nearest counting most, into a market level for your town. Far from any of them the estimate fades back to the national figure, and beyond about four hundred miles it is the national figure.
Costed against your actual basket
Every ingredient across every meal is added up first, then matched to real package sizes at each store, so two meals that both need half an onion buy one onion. The pantry comes off before anything is bought. The total is that basket, package by package, to the cent.
Not every aisle moves
How much each aisle follows your market.
Share of the local difference each category takes. Each chain then gets its own index for your area, which is what the Stores tab shows as a percentage against the national figure.
Read the number right
What it is, and what it is not.
Sales and stock are modelled
A few items marked down and, now and then, one out of stock are a model of how often a chain runs a special and how often a shelf is empty, not reports from the store. Roughly one product in fourteen is on offer in a given week. Treat a sale badge as a reason to check, not a promise.
How fresh it is
A reading of your area is taken when you share a location and refreshed once it is six hours old. The catalog is updated when we learn a price has moved. If a total is consistently off for your store, the product and the shelf price you saw let us correct it for everyone.
What to use it for
Choosing between stores and between weeks, where the comparison is more reliable than any single number, and setting a budget the week can be planned against. Not the exact figure at checkout, and not a specific sale. Both belong to the store.
See it cost a week.
Pick a store, say who is eating, and watch the basket price itself. No account, nothing saved.
Open the live demoA price that is wrong? Tell us the product and the shelf price.