The road to success for Colorado Springs online startup Peanut Butter List LLC has been long and filled with potholes.

Started by Adam and Branda Hebert in 2009 as a way to cut their grocery bill, the company debuted its flagship product earlier this month after six years of research and development, building and rebuilding the site, all on a shoestring budget while its founders held down other full-time jobs. The site (www.peanutbutterlist.com) compares prices of nearly 10,000 items at Albertsons, King Soopers and Safeway along the Front Range, or about 25 percent of the inventory each store sells. but doesn’t include any pharmacy, health or beauty products.

Peanut Butter List attracted about 1,000 users earlier this month from an item on its blog listing prices on 250 items in a King Soopers sale, called “Mega Event,” that requires customers to buy 10 items to save $5. The company is offering free access to its site for the rest of the month and plans to begin charging $1 a week in December, though a two-week trial access subscription will be available. Peanut Butter List CEO Adam Hebert hopes to attract up to 5,000 paying users by the end of next year and 30,000 subscribers within five years.

The company says users can reduce their grocery bills between 20 percent and 50 percent by buying items at lowest price among the three grocery chains, depending on what items they buy. Savings would be reduced if users do all of their shopping at one stores instead of using all three chains, Adam Hebert said.

The couple, and two partners added last year, have invested less than $10,000 on programming costs, server space and other costs to launch the site for Front Range users, but will need to find investors to take it nationwide, Hebert said. They also hope to expand the number of items they track, add features such as predicting when the sale price will be the lowest on items listed on the site (it already sends out price alerts when items go on sale and scores individual purchases for savings on a scale of zero to 100) and eventually make the service available as a smartphone app, he said.

Both Adam and Branda Hebert have backgrounds in grocery business. He spent 17 years as merchandising and sales manager for the local Pepsi distributor, while she has been a department manager for Safeway for 12 years, Adam Hebert left Pepsi Bottling Group in September to devote full time to Peanut Butter List, while Branda remains with Safeway. They came up with the idea for the company as a way to reduce their grocery bill and spent nearly five years researching prices at the three chains to confirm that each chain keeps prices fairly uniform along the Front Range.

“I did a lot of research and development and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to build the site without spending a lot of money. Based on the quotes we had received, it was going to cost $100,000 to build the site. We couldn’t afford that, so we did a lot of networking through Peak Startup to find someone to develop the site,” Adam Hebert said.

Adam Hebert had planned to call the company PB for price book but decided to instead call it Peanut Butter List after finding an online video of a woman saying that she based her decision on where to shop each week after checking the price of peanut butter among multiple stores.

The couple brought in Brad Brackel, a former commercial real estate agent who also worked local mapping firm Sanborn Co. and defense logistics contractor Pikes Peak Cargo Secure, and Judy Mattie, founder of Pikes Peak Cargo Secure and a former paralegal with the law firm Sherman & Howard, to help get the website completed and launched. The site was nearly complete but not yet working a year ago before the programmer they had hired got another job in Denver, forcing Peanut Butter List to find another programmer and eventually start the development process over.

The company eventually found a programmer through Peak Startup, a networking group for local entrepreneurs. James Clark, a local web developer, agreed to reprogram the site for a small fee plus the opportunity to go to work for the company fulltime as it grows, Adam Hebert said.

Competitors include The Grocery Game, a California company that offers lists of specials matched with coupons at grocery stores nationwide to paid members; MyGroceryDeals.com, an online search engine for weekly grocery specials nationwide, and ikonomo, which tracks grocery prices for all major chains in the Denver area.

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Contact Wayne Heilman: 636-0234