How this started
One calm place to answer "is this a deal?"
I grew up watching receipts get checked twice. Money was tight, time was tighter, and nobody had patience for a spreadsheet in the parking lot. As an adult doing my own weekly shop, I kept hitting the same wall. Two cartons look the same until you notice the ounces. A bright sale sticker hides a worse unit price than the store brand two shelves over.
The first version of Smopper was nights and weekends. Scraping together feeds, learning where the data breaks, apologizing when a match was wrong, fixing it, trying again. I kept asking whether I would hand this screen to my own family. If the answer was no, it was not ready.
These days Smopper is still lean. Coverage starts where I can keep it honest, mostly Midwest regional chains for now, and grows when the data earns it. The compare tool and Smopper Insights both matter to me. One is for the receipt. The other is for the conversation at the kitchen table when money feels tight.
