A client needing daily product prices and stock status from seven UK supermarket chains to power a grocery comparison app.

Use Case

Grocery price comparison app

Region

United Kingdom

Sources

Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Co-op, Aldi, Lidl, [Confirm 7th chain]

Number of sources (plus an ad-hoc store-locator pull)

Shelf & Member Prices

Chain by Chain

Stock Status

Daily

Contact Sales

Key Takeaways

Actowiz Solutions is delivering UK supermarket price and stock data to a solo-founder grocery comparison app. After reviewing a full-attribute sample, the client asked for member prices, EANs, crawl timestamps, UTF-8 encoding and allergens before a long-term SLA. The project moved to a paid one-month daily pilot, with those fixes built into the daily JSON feed.

What did the client need?

A solo founder building a UK grocery comparison app on a tight budget needed one daily snapshot of product prices and stock status from seven chains, as JSON ready to load into the app. A one-off pull of store locations was also needed. A daily cadence, rather than hourly, kept the feed affordable.

What made this hard?

The first full-attribute sample exposed real gaps, and the client's review was detailed.

Two prices per product – loyalty schemes such as Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury's Nectar show a member price beside the shelf price. The sample did not split them cleanly, although the CMA's loyalty pricing review shows why both matter.
Missing identifiers and metadata – the sample lacked EANs, a currency field, crawl timestamps and batch metadata, so cross-chain matching and proof of when a price was seen were not possible.
Encoding – the sample was delivered in Windows-1252, not UTF-8, which can break the £ sign; W3C guidance recommends UTF-8.
Pack sizes and unit prices – chains write sizes differently ("4 x 330ml", "1kg"); unit pricing follows UK price marking rules, so one normalised format was needed.
Stock and allergens vary by chain – some sites show both online; others show little. [Verify which chains expose stock and allergens online, especially Aldi and Lidl]
Budget – fixes were focused on the fields the app actually displays.

How did Actowiz solve it?

We agreed a paid one-month daily pilot and fixed the sample gaps inside it, rather than delaying delivery.

Approach

Schema first – an agreed JSON schema marking each field as always present or conditional per chain.
Separate price fields – shelf price, member price and promotion text in their own fields, with currency on every record.
Identifiers and timestamps – EAN where shown, a crawl timestamp per record and a batch ID per file.
Normalisation – pack size split into quantity and unit, unit price standardised, output in UTF-8.
Daily QA – record counts, null rates and price ranges checked before release.
Store-locator pull – publicly listed store addresses and hours, delivered separately.

Only publicly available product and store information is collected, with site terms respected.

Data Attributes / Fields

Field	Description
batch_id	Daily batch identifier with record count and run date
crawl_timestamp	Date and time the record was collected (UTC)
retailer	Supermarket chain name
product_name	Product title as shown online
ean	European Article Number where published
shelf_price	Standard price for all shoppers
member_price	Loyalty or member price (e.g. Clubcard), if shown
promo_text	Promotion description, e.g. multi-buy
pack_size_unit_price	Normalised pack size, unit and price per unit, with currency
stock_status	In stock, low stock or out of stock where shown; allergens in a linked field

What were the results?

The UK grocery comparison app project is currently at pilot stage, so results are qualitative for now. Final figures will be added after the client reviews the pilot deliveries and confirms the next phase.

Sample gaps closed: member price, currency, EAN, timestamps, batch metadata and UTF-8 were added to improve data completeness. All required sample fields added and validated.
App-ready JSON: daily files are structured to load into the app without manual clean-up. Daily delivery on-time rate pending pilot validation.
Cross-chain matching: EANs and normalised pack sizes support like-for-like product comparisons across Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and four other UK supermarket chains. EAN fill rate by chain pending data validation.
Path to a longer SLA: the SLA has been sent for signature, with the agreement tied to pilot acceptance. SLA signature and pilot acceptance pending client review.

Project at a Glance

Metric	Value
Use Case	Grocery price comparison app
Region	United Kingdom
Sources	Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Co-op, Aldi, Lidl, [Confirm 7th chain] + store locators
Metrics	Shelf price, member price, promotions, stock status, EAN, unit price, allergens
Reconciliation / Method	EAN and pack-size matching; daily QA on counts, nulls and price ranges
Cadence	Daily (1-month paid pilot); store locator ad hoc
Output	UTF-8 JSON with batch metadata

Client Feedback

“Actowiz Solutions understood our need for reliable daily grocery price and stock data across major UK supermarket chains. The sample review gave us the confidence to move forward with a paid pilot, and their approach aligned well with our goal of building a budget-friendly grocery comparison app.”

— Founder, UK Grocery Comparison App

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What UK supermarket price and stock data can you collect?

A: Public product names, shelf and member prices, promotions, pack sizes, unit prices, and EANs, stock status and allergens where published.

Q: Can you capture Clubcard and Nectar prices separately?

A: Yes. Member prices go into their own field next to the shelf price, so apps can show both.

Q: Why start with a paid pilot?

A: It tests real daily deliveries against agreed acceptance criteria, not just one sample.

Q: What format is the data delivered in?

A: UTF-8 JSON by default, with batch metadata; CSV or API delivery is also possible.

Need Daily UK Grocery Data?

Read our UK supermarket data guide, the 12-chain comparison app case study, Tesco and Sainsbury's pages, or grocery price comparison data feeds. Visit actowizsolutions.com to discuss your data requirement.

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