Optimize Your Route

Save time at the grocery store by letting Map Your Store find the fastest path through the aisles. Instead of zigzagging back and forth, you will follow a route that hits every item on your list in the most efficient order.

Prerequisites

• A Map Your Store account
• At least one store mapped with aisles (see Map Your Local Store)
• Items on your shopping list

Steps

1. Make sure your store is mapped. Before you can optimize a route, Map Your Store needs to know the layout of the store you are visiting. If your store is not mapped yet, follow the Map Your Local Store guide to set one up. You can also browse the Marketplace for stores that other users have already mapped.

2. Add items to your shopping list. Open your shopping list and add everything you need to pick up. You can type items in manually, scan a barcode, import from a recipe, or use AI-predicted suggestions based on your past shopping habits.

3. Select the store you are visiting. On the Shop page, choose the store you plan to visit from your saved stores. Map Your Store will load the store map and match your list items to aisle locations.

4. Choose an optimization algorithm. Map Your Store offers four options depending on how much time you want to spend calculating:

   • Quick Route -- Uses a nearest-neighbor approach. Fast to calculate and works well for short lists (under 10 items).
   • Improved Route -- Refines the quick route by swapping segments to shorten the total distance. A good balance of speed and quality.
   • Best Route -- Uses simulated annealing to explore many possible orderings. Takes a moment longer but finds shorter routes for bigger lists.
   • Smart Route -- The most advanced option. It accounts for physical obstacles like shelving units and walls, routing you through actual walkable paths. Works best when your store is fully mapped with aisle geometry.

5. View the optimized route on the map. Once the algorithm finishes, the route appears as a colored path on the store map. Each stop is numbered so you can see exactly where to go and in what order.

6. Compare with list-order route to see time saved. Toggle the route comparison view to see your optimized route side-by-side with the default list-order route. Map Your Store shows you the estimated distance difference so you can see how much backtracking you are avoiding.

7. Follow the route while shopping. Take your phone into the store and follow the numbered stops. As you pick up each item, check it off your list. The map updates to show your progress.

Tips

• Smart Route delivers the best results for fully mapped stores with detailed aisle geometry. If your store only has basic aisle labels, Improved Route is a better choice.
• Quick Route is perfectly fine for small lists of five or fewer items -- the difference between algorithms is negligible at that size.
• If an item is not matched to an aisle, Map Your Store will place it at the end of the route. You can manually assign items to aisles to improve accuracy over time.

What's Next

• Map Your Local Store -- Improve your route quality by adding more detail to your store map.
• Track Prices -- Log the prices you see while shopping to build a price history.
• Multi-Store Shopping -- Plan a trip that visits multiple stores in one outing.