Ohio dad builds free tool to fight high grocery prices
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
A Dayton-area dad got tired of planning dinner first and checking grocery sales second, so he built a website that flips the process.
Why it matters: Grocery prices are roughly 30% higher than they were in 2019, pushing shoppers to hunt harder for deals — just as new pressures threaten to drive food costs even higher.
Driving the news: Beavercreek's Bill McCormick created Dishcount, a free digital tool that turns grocery-store deals into meal ideas.
- Enter your ZIP code, choose a store and Dishcount finds sale items that can become dinner.
- Users can select deals themselves or have the site generate a five-meal plan based on their household and preferences.
How it started: McCormick says the idea came from nights spent toggling among Kroger, Aldi and Meijer ads, figuring out what was cheap and then hunting for recipes to match.
- He found grocery-ad aggregators and recipe sites, but nothing that connected the two the way he wanted.
Plot twist: McCormick isn't a software developer. He has a business degree and works in contracts.
- In January, he asked Anthropic's Claude to walk him through the technical process of creating the site.
- He spent the next several months building and refining Dishcount before launching it this spring.
Zoom in: Dishcount works with Kroger-family stores and other supported grocery chains around the country, though availability varies by location.
- Kroger shoppers can connect their accounts and send ingredients from Dishcount directly to their online carts.
By the numbers: McCormick tells Axios the site is averaging about 40 users a day, up from one or two roughly two months ago.
- About 100 people have signed up for its weekly newsletter.
- "I want to make it so that people can just click one or two buttons and get inexpensive and, for the most part, healthy meals."