BITE-RecipeGram

Reducing food waste with student-promoted school meals.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by the massive amount of food waste in our school cafeteria, especially from USDA-mandated fruits and vegetables that students are required to take but often throw away. We wanted to create a platform that makes students excited about those ingredients by letting them take ownership—through recipe creation, voting, and feedback—turning waste into engagement.

What it does

BITE – RecipeGram is a student-powered web platform where: -Schools post a weekly set of required ingredients.

-Students submit creative recipes using those ingredients.

-Other students vote on their favorite recipes.

-Cafeteria staff use the top-voted recipes to guide meal prep.

-Students can also give feedback on portions and hunger levels.

-Admins can manage users, reset submissions, and update ingredients with image uploads.

-The goal is to reduce food waste, increase student satisfaction, and make cafeteria food smarter and more personalized.

How we built it

We built this as a full-stack web app using:

-Flask (Python) for the backend

-SQLite for lightweight database storage

-HTML/Jinja for dynamic templates

-Tailwind CSS for sleek and responsive styling

-JavaScript for real-time voting functionality

-A custom admin panel for managing users, recipes, and ingredients

-Secure user authentication with school ID and password

-We also added image upload and voting features, and allowed only one account per student.

Challenges we ran into

-Handling image uploads securely and ensuring consistent file naming

-Preventing users from liking a post more than once

-Managing user sessions while allowing admin-specific access

-Getting reliable ingredient images without external API limitations

-Coordinating all the Flask routes and templates across different user types

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-Built a fully functional, beautiful, and responsive platform from scratch

-Integrated a smart recipe voting system with like/unlike functionality

-Designed an admin dashboard to manage both users and ingredients

-Added visual feedback, error handling, and secure user authentication

-Created a platform that could realistically be used in real schools to reduce waste

What we learned

-How to structure and scale a Flask app with multiple routes and templates

-Best practices for user authentication, validation, and file handling

-How to make a clean UI with Tailwind CSS and keep it accessible and responsive

-The importance of user testing and debugging for edge cases like double votes or missing images

What's next for BITE-RecipeGram

-Enable students to leave comments on recipes for collaboration

-Add a "Top Recipes of the Month" leaderboard

-Work with local school districts to pilot test in real cafeterias

-Add email/password recovery and password hashing

-Integrate nutritional info and allergy flags for submitted recipes

-Scale beyond schools into community food programs

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