Meet Crave: from idea to plate.
Shop the Recipe
Track your pantry: Scan receipts and food items
Recipes made for you

Inspiration

We were inspired to create Crave through our own experiences as college students and a shared love for food and cooking. With our busy schedules, its difficult to find time to cook our saved recipes, so they sit in our phones, forgotten. We wanted to create a solution that would simplify the process of turning online food videos into a delicious meal on our dinner table. We also wanted a way to track our groceries. Very often we find expired cheese in the back of the fridgerator or a box of brownie mix from 3 years ago. We wanted to create a way to fix this!

What it does

Crave makes the cooking process easy. We track your pantry items, allergies, creating a tailored and personal experience. We also provide video and link extraction, allowing users to import recipes with just a click of the share button. If you aren't satisfied with what you find online, our in-app chef can spice up your recipe, or make an entirely new one! Crave gives you access to delicous, homecooked meals without any extras stress or effort. We made a simple, sleek, modern design that is easy to learn so people of all ages can use our app!

Challenges we ran into

We really improved with our time management and coordination as a team. As engineering students in university, we had to balance exams & long homeworks with development, testing, and working on our final app presentation. The long nights in lecture halls at 3am created cool moments where we hit 'flow state' and learned to play off eachother's strengths.

We ran into many challenges with creating an optimal user flow for features like pantry scanning. We kept asking ourselves questions like "should the pantry scan be separate from the grocery list?" and "what's the most optimal way to onboard each user?"

Our entire goal was to create an app where users didn't have to think about planning their next meal, and we wanted to get them using the product as soon as possible. We went through nearly a dozen iterations of various user interfaces, menus, and button layouts to try to figure what felt 'simply right' for anyone to use. This took a while, and was a significant challenge, but it ended up making our app incredibly user-friendly and intutive in the process.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're incredibly proud of integrating our pantry inventory system throughout the entire app, and hooking it up to our custom 'Spice it Up' feature. One issue that we have faced as students from predominantly Asian backgrounds is that our parents often prefer 'spicier' foods. By modifying recipes to follow what we have in our house, we can reduce food waste while also creating some amazing fusion dishes.

We're also really happy with our our presentation video turned out. Inspired by videos from Cluely and Anthropic, we went for an organic feeling ad that showed our product in actual use scenarios. We didn't want a scenario where interested customers sat through 3 minutes of screen recordings and monotone voice overs. We decided to put a lot of time into storyboarding and acting out interesting scenes for our video.

What we learned

For prior hackathons, we tried integrating test payment features for cross-platform app. We spent a majority of our time trying to mess around with StoreKit, but with RevenueCat we were able to easily integrate a payment screen. Learning how to leverage external platforms to streamline a lot of features that aren't as intuitive natively (like RevenueCat and Gemini) will prove really useful in future projects.

What's next for Crave

Shipping

We got our family and friends to help test the app as we built it, and they really love it! David's mom said this would help keep track of the vegetables in her fridge! We plan to apply the app for the app store after this hackathon and hopefully get support from Eitan and RevenueCat!

Instagram and Youtube

We are working on expanding our video imports to other mainstream platforms such as Youtube and Instagram, so users can add recipes as they come across them.

Notification System

We will be implementing smart notifications that gently remind you about recipes you’ve saved and help you actually make them. If you’re missing ingredients, Crave will surface a quick, organized shopping list right when it matters—like before a grocery run or while you’re at the store. The reminders will learn your habits over time so they stay helpful, not annoying. Notifications will also highlight pantry items reaching the end of their shelf lives, allowing users to reduce waste and save money.

Food Preference Recognition

We'll analyze recipes users end up fully completing, and suggest recipes that we think will match their taste preferences. Crave will help users discover new favorites that they'll cook over and over.

Maps Integration

To make cooking even easier, Crave will map out your grocery trips, finding the nearest and cheapest stores. We'll ensure items are in stock and at the best price point, making the shopping experience efficent and effortless.