Website helps you locate hard to find items like Clorox wipes, toilet paper

The high demand for cleaning and disinfecting products, and toilet paper, has led to empty shelves in area stores. A new website can help you locate an item you need at a store nearby.

Visit Instok.org, type in the product name, then type in your zip code and you will see a list of local stores and whether they have the item in stock or not.

The disclaimer says the site is a tool to "guide you in the right direction" so you don't have to drive around to multiple stores.

Two Texas teens spent their spring break building the site.

"When we came back from college, we realized that our parents were really struggling to find some grocery items," Rithwik Pattikonda, 19, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, told ABC News. "When we saw the news, we realized that the issue was much more widespread."

Pattikonda teamed up with his buddy, Darshan Bhatta, a freshman at the same university and fellow computer science major, to figure what they could do to help.

"We saw a problem, we tried to find a way that we could solve it, and then we started discussing that there is nothing that really tracks inventory of local grocery stores near you," Bhatta, 18, said.

The duo, both from the greater Dallas area, launched the website March 23, and already have more than 280,000 users.

"After we launched this, we realized we could build more features and more sides of the platforms to help people even more," Pattikonda said.

Those include a community forum where users can post if they've found specific items at a specific store, so users nearby can then see that information in real time on their feed.

While initially they only included stock information for stores in their community, they've updated it to feature inventories of stores across the country.

"We are trying to add stores that are more nationwide first," Pattikonda said. "Hopefully, our community features can help promote smaller businesses and more local chains.

Share this article: