NEW: Food prices in Europe have been soaring. Earlier this year, the Austrian government said it would build a price database to let people compare costs at different supermarkets. It said this would take months to make and only include a small number of product categories. 

Within 2 hours, nostr:npub10r22zfd5vhjqaajmjn59ua30t4rh7zdezkguenzzf7sflajj832sl0w6yx had built a first prototype, pulling the data from supermarket's websites, and open sourced the project. Now Heisse Preise lists 177,000 products from 10 chains. 

The transparency has allowed prices to be compared: and the results appear to show supermarkets are watching each other and adjusting their prices based on others. The competition authority is investigating and already said new laws should make supermarkets publish proper APIs with full item data

https://www.wired.com/story/heisse-preise-food-prices/

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