ZipList raises $2M round for Web grocery list

Hopefully your Thanksgiving grocery shopping is already done, but, if not, ZipList could be a help

Don't forget the pumpkin pie!

ZipList, a service for managing your grocery list online, has raised just over $2 million in funding, we’ve confirmed with the company. Persons involved in the deal include Geoffrey Allen, CEO and founder of ZipList; Steven Murray, general partner at SoftBank Capital; and Janet Balis, EVP of sales and marketing at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

The company has raised $4.5 million to date.

Headquartered in Massachusetts, SoftBank focuses on early-stage technology-based companies, like Buddy Media and Sermo. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is Martha Stewart’s media and merchandising company that oversees all segments of her business--publishing, Internet, broadcast and merchandise. These are the round’s main investors, though angel investors were also involved.

Using ZipList to make a grocery list is as simple as it should be. The site automatically processes any item you enter into the search field to properly categorize it within the list. Cranberries and sweet potatoes, for example, fall under “Produce,” honey and horseradish fall under “Condiments, Dressings and Oils,” and user-entered items that cannot be categorized as groceries, like “iPad,” get filed under the category “Other.” (For some reason, “Kanye’s new record” got placed under “Canned Foods, Soups and Mixes.”)

ZipList is more than just a simple list though.

You can share your list with family members, who are able to add items to the list via email, IM, text message, the Web, a mobile Web browser, or from an iPhone or Android application. (The Android app was just released at the beginning of November.) Changes to the grocery list register in real-time for everybody connected.

Besides just listing groceries, users can search a database of 500,000 recipes and, from those recipes, add to their list the items they’re missing. And with the iPhone or Android apps, users can scan item barcodes to ensure they know exactly what they’re looking for.