Inspiration
Restaurants generate massive amounts of food waste at the end of each day, with perfectly good meals and ingredients being thrown away simply because they couldn't be sold. Meanwhile, food banks and charitable organizations struggle to find consistent sources of fresh food to serve their communities. We were inspired to create a solution that could bridge this gap, turning what would be waste into valuable resources for those in need.
What it does
Food Bridge is an application that connects restaurants with excess food to food banks and charitable organizations. Restaurants can easily post their leftover food items at the end of the day, including details about quantity, type of food, and pickup times. Food banks can then search for restaurants in their vicinity and use specific keywords to find exactly what they're looking for. The application suggests relevant posts from nearby restaurants, allowing food banks to quickly identify and claim food donations that match their needs.
How we built it
We built Food Bridge using Python Streamlit for the frontend interface, providing an intuitive and responsive user experience. For data storage and management, we implemented AWS RDS with PostgreSQL to handle restaurant listings, food posts, and user interactions. The backend architecture ensures reliable data persistence and efficient querying capabilities to match food banks with relevant restaurant offerings.
Challenges we ran into
Our development process faced several significant hurdles. Initially, we planned to integrate Google Maps API for distance calculations and location-based matching, but encountered account access issues that prevented us from using this service. We also struggled with connecting to our EC2 instance, dealing with security group configurations and network connectivity problems. Additionally, we faced integration challenges when trying to connect different components of our application, particularly linking the Streamlit frontend with our AWS RDS database and the search component.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud to create something that has the potential to make a meaningful impact by reducing food waste while helping food banks serve their communities more effectively.
What we learned
This project taught us valuable lessons about integrating different technologies and components into a cohesive system. We gained hands-on experience with cloud services, particularly AWS RDS and EC2, and learned how to troubleshoot complex networking and security issues.
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