{"slug": "show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp", "title": "Show HN: Spread – Real-Time New Zealand Supermarket Data via API and MCP", "summary": "Spread, a new API for New Zealand supermarket data, launched with product search, price observations, competitor comparisons, and MCP support for AI agents, covering Pak'nSave, New World, and Woolworths. The API, built by the developer of ButterUp.app, offers a 7-day free trial and aims to help businesses price products competitively in a market dominated by a few supermarket monopolies.", "body_md": "Kia ora HN,\n\nI built Spread, an API for New Zealand grocery data.\n\nGroceries are really expensive in New Zealand and there is barely any competition in the supermarkets monopolies that control the whole grocery market\n\nI was originally collecting grocery pricing data for ButterUp.app, a supermarket comparison app I’ve been building for NZ.\n\nAt some point I realised the data layer was probably useful on its own, so I pulled it out into a separate API. So, that anyone who is building a business to open a grocery supermarket in NZ, they can get latest prices of their competitors and based on that they can price their own products.\n\nSpread currently covers products and pricing from Pak’nSave, New World and Woolworths (the giant supermarkets over here in New Zealand).\n\nIt gives you:\n\n* product search * current price observations * competitor price comparisons * structured API responses * API keys and usage limits * MCP support for AI agents\n\nThe main use cases I had in mind were price comparison apps, grocery analytics, AI shopping tools, businesses adjusting their prices based on grocery market conditions, and anything else that needs NZ supermarket data without having to build the collection layer from scratch.\n\nIt’s still early.\n\nThere’s a 7-day free trial if anyone wants to play around with it.\n\nWould be keen to get feedback, especially from people who have built data APIs, scraping pipelines, MCP servers, or developer tools.\n\nHappy to answer technical questions about how I’m collecting, normalising and serving the data.\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49317344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49317344)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 0", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp", "canonical_source": "https://spread.butterup.app/", "published_at": "2026-08-16 06:13:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-16 06:40:34.132286+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["Spread", "ButterUp.app", "Pak'nSave", "New World", "Woolworths"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-spread-real-time-new-zealand-supermarket-data-via-api-and-mcp.jsonld"}}