Food Quest

Tech Architecture

Inspiration

Food is centred around our survival and cultures. But as much as we love food, we also tend to throw it away. So much so that the UN food and agriculture organization estimates that globally 1/3 of food produced for consumption never gets eaten. This is where our webapp: “Food Quest” comes into play, where we aim to counter this problem.

How it Works

Food Quest is an online marketplace for consumers to buy produce nearing its best before date. It allows businesses to buy discounted ingredients from each other depending on the need for those ingredients. Businesses can also sell products and gain insight on their food wastage through data visualizations and reports. Consumer POV: Once registered, a consumer can go to the user portal where they are able to view a list of food items/ingredients that are available to them. The list is sorted based on the location of the consumer so they are able to view the items close to their location. There are filter choices, including a search bar that the user can select from to make their search a little easier. Business POV: While registering, the businesses will answer some profiling questions that will help us compare their statistical data to the industry average. This will help determine the amount of food wasted and help gain businesses insight regarding what they can do to reduce it. Once registered, they have access to the business portal, where they can upload the food items that they want to sell. They are also able to purchase ingredients from other registered businesses if they would like to.

How we built it

Our team consists of a range of set of skills and experiences that complement each other, which enables us to come together to create this solution. We built the logo for the website using canva and photoshop. We built the website using html, css, chart.js and javascript.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was building the entire website as out entire team was unfamiliar with the technology we would need to use. It was our first time building a website and so getting the graphics, navigating around the website, designing the structure and layout of the website was a big challenge in itself. We overcame that by working well together as a team and assigning tasks to research, create and implement. Another challenge was that we had planned to integrate API into our website to help the consumers get a better idea of the available registered restaurants near them. However, because of the constrictive time limit, we are considering overcoming that challenge close to the future.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Bringing an idea to life, while working with completely unfamiliar technology, in just 48 hours, is a huge accomplishment for us. Ultimately, we are thrilled that we also managed to overcome most of our challenges in that timeframe.

What we learned

Organisation and team-work are two things that we were able to continuously improve throughout the time we worked together. In addition to that, we constantly learnt so much more about html, javascript, chart.js and css and how to implement them together to design a website.

What's next for Food Quest

We are considering creating a more simplified version of the website as a mobile app. In the future, we will try and gamify the app for the consumers/customers to collect what we would call “food points” which they can redeem for extra discounts for eligible restaurants. As the market share increases and growth of the Food Quest users, the Food Quest might charge a commission on each transaction, eg. 5% which compares with Uber Eats 30%, this allows Food Quest to be sustainable.