Giant Food

Review by eFreeware

Giant Food is the official shopping app from Giant of Maryland LLC, and it exists to fold the grocery run into your phone. Weekly ads, coupons, specials and your loyalty points all live in one place, and the same account carries them into the store. If Giant is where you already do your grocery shopping, this is the app that keeps the savings attached to you rather than to a paper circular you left on the kitchen counter.

The pitch is straightforward: clip what you want, save it to your account, and let the discounts apply when you check out with your Giant Food card. A dedicated Shop section and simpler navigation were part of a recent refresh, along with Flexible Rewards points that the developer describes as easier to redeem. It is a companion app rather than a store in itself, and it is built around the assumption that you shop with Giant in some form already.

It is free to install and there are no in-app purchases, though ads are present. The install base sits above half a million, and the average rating is 3.9 from 6,486 ratings. Those numbers suggest a tool people keep on their phones rather than one they try once and delete, which is roughly what you would expect from an app tied to a weekly shopping routine.

Deals that clip themselves to your account

The centerpiece is the coupon and weekly ad system. At checkout, whether that happens online or in a store, the clipped items come off automatically when your Giant Food card is used. That is the whole loop, and it removes the part of couponing most people dislike: remembering what you clipped and presenting it at the right moment.

Bonus Buy Savings sit in the same system, and the developer says the redemption side has been made easier in this version. What I like about the design is how the savings are handled. The savings are attached to the account, so the deals follow you between an online order and a trip to the store without any extra steps.

The practical value here depends on how much of your shopping happens at Giant. Someone who splits groceries across several stores will find less to clip, while a household that does most of its shopping in one place gets a running list of discounts that accumulates week after week.

Rewards points and the tools that save time in store

Flexible Rewards run alongside the coupons. You sign in to see your points, earn them for every dollar spent online or in-store, and redeem them for fuel and grocery savings and other special offers. Because the balance lives on the account, checking it before a fill-up or a big grocery run is a quick way to see whether you have something waiting to be used.

The in-store side is where the app does more than hold coupons. After signing in, your loyalty card can be stored in your phone's wallet and scanned at the register, which applies any clipped coupons and rewards. That single scan covers the loyalty card and the deals together, which is the most useful thing the app does for anyone who shops in person.

Two features go after waiting specifically. Deli Order Ahead lets you place a deli order before you arrive, which the developer frames around game-day crowds and the lines that come with them. SCAN IT! is the other one: you scan items as you shop and bypass the checkout line. Between them, the app is trying to remove the two slowest points of a supermarket trip, and for a weekly shopper those minutes add up.

What the app asks of you

The app is free, and there is no in-app purchase to consider. Ads are part of the package, which is consistent with a retail app that is promoting its own weekly deals. The bigger commitment is an account: signing in is what gives you access to Flexible Rewards and to your Giant Food card, and it is what makes clipped coupons follow you to checkout.

The other requirement is a Giant Food card, since that is the mechanism the discounts ride on, both online and in store. Rewards accrue per dollar spent, so the points scale with how much of your grocery budget flows through Giant rather than through another store. Anyone who rarely shops there will find the rewards side thin, and that is a natural consequence of how the program is built rather than a flaw in the app.

For the in-store features, you are relying on your phone being with you, since the digital card in your wallet is what gets scanned at the register. That is a small thing, but it is worth thinking through if you normally leave the phone behind.

Getting the most out of a weekly routine

The app rewards a little planning before you shop. Skimming the weekly ad and clipping coupons before you leave the house means the discounts are already attached to your account by the time you reach the register, and you are not scrolling through offers while standing in an aisle. Doing that once a week, when the new ad lands, is probably the habit that gets the most out of it.

If you use SCAN IT!, the coupons and rewards still come through the same account, so there is no separate step for them. Deli Order Ahead is worth remembering before a weekend shop or any occasion where the deli counter is likely to be busy, since placing the order ahead is the entire point of the feature.

Checking your Flexible Rewards balance occasionally is the other habit worth forming. Points are earned automatically on spending, but the redemption side is something you have to act on, whether that means fuel savings or grocery offers. Treating the app as a place to look before a fill-up, not just before a grocery run, is how the rewards side earns its keep.

The app has been around since 2011, and the most recent update is limited to performance enhancements and bug fixes, which suggests a product that is being maintained rather than rebuilt. That is a reasonable sign for a utility you might keep installed for years.

A companion worth keeping for regular Giant shoppers

Giant Food is a well-defined tool: it holds the weekly ad, coupons and rewards for one grocery chain and connects them to your account so the discounts apply at checkout. The features that save real time, Deli Order Ahead and SCAN IT!, are aimed at people who shop in person and would rather not stand in line. If your groceries mostly come from Giant, installing it is close to a no-brainer, since the savings are otherwise sitting unused on your loyalty account.

The case is weaker for occasional shoppers. Rewards accrue per dollar spent at Giant, and coupon clipping only pays off if you are buying those items there. It is also worth going in with realistic expectations about the rating: 3.9 across 6,486 ratings is a decent score for a retail app, not a flawless one, and ads are part of the experience.

My recommendation is simple. If Giant is your main grocery store and you carry a phone anyway, this replaces the paper circular, the clipped coupon envelope and the loyalty card in your wallet with one app. If Giant is a once-a-month stop, the rewards and deals here will not have much to work with.

What's new in version 9.4.3

We're constantly making improvements for a better customer experience. Updates in this release include:  Performance enhancements  Bug fixes