Food Expiry Tracker

Design Implementation

Motivation

20% of the domestic food in the United States is reportedly wasted because of expiration dates and It nearly accounts to $161 billion per year. Therefore, if we were to find a solution, it might significantly reduce food waste.

What it does

We are creating an interactive app that requires users to scan products or items so that our system can record them, send reminders when the expiration date is getting close, and reward them for doing so.

How it was built

We brainstormed the issue as a group using existing expiry-date apps.

Difficulties we faced

We encountered issues like

Why is the consumer going to use this program for a certain quantity of his precious time?

We, therefore, developed a system of rewards whereby he/she receives coupons after scanning a certain quantity of goods.

At first, we believed that users of an app would have to manually enter how much of a certain product they had consumed.?

We overcome this by using pop-up push notifications where the consumer will be given three to four options to choose from so that they can interact with the app more quickly.

How can we make this model profitable?

So, we developed a strategy that involves selling customer data to retail giants like Walmart, Costco, and others so that the merchants may give specific customers customized offers. for instance, if a person buys meat consistently over time, they will receive discounts on meat.

How can we distinguish between the expiration dates of fresh fruit and those of other products, where the shelf life has passed but the product can still be used?

We can utilize ML models to forecast the typical shelf-life of fresh fruit. Others can have default expiration dates, where the app records the dates for selected products whose manufacturer-recommended expiration dates can be exceeded and advises the user to do the same.

We are able to create a model that generates income while at the same time addressing the issue of food waste.

What we discovered

There are several approaches to address the issue of food waste, but for any solution to be effective, the customer or consumer must be involved.

What's coming up for the Food Expiry Tracker?

The theoretical approach to the issue statement is finished, and the following steps involve applying a variety of cutting-edge technologies to create a workable model or prototype that is yet to be implemented. and we can also extend this by integrating this app into retail Inventory systems.