App Review: Schnuck’s

When I was visiting our local grocery store this week, I discovered that they now have an app for iPhone. As geeked out I get about apps AND the fact that they advertised it in-store with a QR code, I couldn’t resist downloading it.

Schnuck’s is a regional grocery chain headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. They have good produce that features local produce at certain times of the year and a fresh meat and seafood counter. The bakery is top-notch as well. One of my favorite things to get from them is a mini-loaf of sweet bread to dip in cheese. Schnuck’s has a pharmacy in-store for customer convenience and they feature services like grocery delivery. There is also a floral department that never ceases to impress.

The app is well-constructed. It’s functional and very easy to use. When you first open it, you select a home store. That store’s information appears under the Store Info tab for easy access. It includes the phone numbers for both the store and pharmacy as buttons that dial through the iPhone.

The next tab is the Weekly Ad. This tab includes the weekly ad in its entirety and breaks it out page by page. The only thing I wish you could do here was to select an item from the ad to immediately add to the Shopping List.

The Shopping List tab includes a list that is very similar to other shopping list apps I’ve seen. A very cool feature within this app is the ability to search for items, including scanning bar codes and being able to add them directly to your shopping list. You can add items manually with generic terms, but when you search on your list or scan, for example, the 3/4 empty carton of milk in the fridge, it will automatically pull up the information on that item including the location in the store.

The Pharmacy tab is included specifically for prescription refills. As someone who is constantly on the go, I appreciate apps like this, Walgreens and CVS that have the refill function. A very nice option they’ve included is the option to be notified when your prescription has been refilled. To access this setting, go to ‘settings’ in the top right hand corner of the Pharmacy screen. Once you open the settings, you will enter your first and last names and turn notifications on or off for prescription refill notifications. Another nifty function is the ability to fill a prescription for someone else. This is helpful because you can set the prescription to refill and they can pick it up at their leisure.

This app gets high marks with me as it’s very easily understood and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. It is clean and functional. That is something I want from this type of app. I could see them adding a section for coupons as this is something they already have on their website. I could also see them adding a function in the shopping list for delivery.

I would recommend this app to anyone who shops at Schnuck’s grocery stores and to those who don’t, I would recommend this app to the managers of the stores you do shop at as an example of what they should have.