FoodShares

Inspiration

One of our group members, Oliver, works at Trader Joe’s, which has pioneered a program called Neighborhood Shares. Rather than disposing of unused or unsold food, Trader Joe’s coordinates with local non-profit organizations like food banks to donate this food and help combat food insecurity.

What it does

After logging into their account, users are greeted with a home page designed similarly to an online shopping cart. They add items by searching for them and selecting them from a dropdown menu that contains all the items from the USDA’s FoodData Central database. When users are satisfied with and confirm their list, they are sent to a page with a map of local food banks and designated drop off sites, which they can sort by inputting their ZIP code or city name into the search tool. After the desired drop off location is selected, and confirmed an automated email is sent to the recipient organization and the user will be expected to drop off their food in a given timeframe.

How we built it

We used React to make the website We used Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI We used FireBase services like FireStore and FireBase Authentication Services to have login information and to send information to our database to reroute to partner foodbanks and nonprofit organizations.

Challenges we ran into

As our group consists entirely of seniors from Issaquah High School, we had our prom on Saturday, severely restricting the timeframe we had to complete the project. As a result, we started today far behind where we should be, but we let this challenge motivate us to work even faster and more efficiently than we would have.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the amount of work that we did in a relatively short amount of time.

What we learned

We learned about the immense pressure that time constraints have on a successful product, since we were extremely restricted by our prom attendance. Furthermore, we learned how to use both Tailwind and React for web, which none of us had any experience in prior.

What's next for FoodShares

A lot of the next steps for FoodShares would occur more on the business side, such as creating official partnerships with food banks and nonprofits across the nation.