Flashfood Scraper - Grocery Deals & Stores

Scrape Flashfood (flashfood.com), the grocery flash-deals app (US and Canada), directly from the same service the official app reads. Supermarkets list surplus food at roughly half price; this actor returns those discounted items with prices, savings, quantity available and best-before dates, plus the stores behind them, for any US or Canadian location. It also monitors availability across runs (NEW, UPDATED, REAPPEARED, EXPIRED), resumes interrupted pulls, and pipes results into your apps through MCP connectors.

Why This Scraper?

• Real app-service data: deal items with original price, discounted price, savings percent, quantity available, best-before date and department in one record.
• Location search around one or many points, with a per-location share of the record budget so multi-city runs stay balanced.
• Store mode: paste store links or ids for a direct per-store read.
• Availability monitoring: scheduled runs classify every record as NEW, UPDATED, UNCHANGED, REAPPEARED or EXPIRED, with per-campaign state you can name or share.
• MCP connector export: send results to Notion and other connectors without changing the dataset.
• Structured failures: a blocked or broken run fails loudly with a clear message instead of returning an empty dataset.

Data You Get

Sample shape: values are illustrative placeholders, not from a live listing.

Field	Example value
kind	item
recordId / itemId	6a916f9bfe402e2e5c5e9264
title	PC ENGLISH MUFFINS ORIGINAL
price	1.62
originalPrice	3.25
discountPercent	50.2
currency	CAD
quantityAvailable	7
bestBefore	2026-08-30T00:00:00+00:00
department	Bakery
imageUrl	https://img.flashfood.com/products/...
listedAt	2026-08-28T11:23:07.380Z
isSnapEligible	false
storeName	Sample Store
banner	Nofrills
street	3975 Wyandotte St. E.
city	Windsor
stateCode	ON
countryCode	CA
latitude / longitude	42.3242 / -82.9881
distanceKm	1.2
storeHours	{"monday": "08:00-21:00", ...}
pickupInstructions	Please see a cashier for order pickup.
changeType	NEW
firstSeenAt / lastSeenAt	2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Store records (optional, kind=store) carry the same store fields plus checkout instructions, hours and EBT support. Every record also carries the full upstream object (raw), so no upstream field is ever dropped.

How to Use

Zero setup: the source serves its public catalogue openly, so paste one or more locations (a city name such as Detroit, Michigan, or coordinates as lat,lng) and run. No account is needed. For recurring deal alerting, switch on incremental mode and schedule the run.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	search	search (locations) or url (store links or ids)
locations	list	Detroit, Michigan	City or place names (Detroit, M4C 1A5), or coordinates as lat,lng
radiusKm	integer	40	Search radius in km, 1 to 160
includeStores	boolean	false	Also emit one record per store, kind=store
countryHint	select	empty	Fill item currency with CAD or USD when a store states no country
storeInputs	array	empty	Store links or ids (url mode)
urls	array	empty	Alias for storeInputs, accepted under the usual Apify URL-mode name
maxItems	integer	20	Stop after this many records (0 = no limit)
resumeFromRunId	string	empty	Continue one interrupted run, skipping collected ids
incrementalMode	boolean	false	Recurring monitoring with change detection
stateKey	string	empty	Name a monitoring campaign (incremental mode)
emitUnchanged	boolean	false	Also return UNCHANGED rows (returns and bills extra rows)
emitExpired	boolean	false	Also return EXPIRED rows after a complete scan
mcpConnectors	array	empty	Optional MCP connector export
notionParentPageUrl	string	empty	Notion parent page for the Notion connector
maxNotifyListings	integer	50	Cap per connector per run
proxyConfiguration	object	proxy on	Standard Apify proxy settings

Filters apply to search mode only; store mode reads the stores you name directly. Source limit: one query returns at most 100 stores (nearest first) and the source ignores page parameters, so cover larger areas with several nearby locations rather than one huge radius.

Output Example

Sample shape: values are illustrative placeholders, not from a live listing.

{
  "kind": "item",
  "recordId": "6a916f9bfe402e2e5c5e9264",
  "itemId": "6a916f9bfe402e2e5c5e9264",
  "title": "PC ENGLISH MUFFINS ORIGINAL",
  "price": 1.62,
  "originalPrice": 3.25,
  "discountPercent": 50.2,
  "currency": "CAD",
  "quantityAvailable": 7,
  "bestBefore": "2026-08-30T00:00:00+00:00",
  "department": "Bakery",
  "imageUrl": "https://img.flashfood.com/products/...",
  "listedAt": "2026-08-28T11:23:07.380Z",
  "isSnapEligible": false,
  "storeId": "629cec56061cc242985326fd",
  "storeName": "Tara's NF Windsor Wyandotte",
  "banner": "Nofrills",
  "street": "3975 Wyandotte St. E., Windsor, Ontario",
  "city": "Windsor",
  "stateCode": "ON",
  "countryCode": "CA",
  "latitude": 42.3242669,
  "longitude": -82.9881846,
  "raw": { "full upstream item object" },
  "changeType": "NEW",
  "changedFields": [],
  "firstSeenAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lastSeenAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Plan Requirement and Terms Note

The actor uses the Apify proxy with automatic exit rotation; run it on any plan that includes proxy access. The source is a free consumer app: the actor reads the same catalogue the app reads, and automated reading may sit outside the source's terms of use, so keep volumes reasonable and respect the source's terms.