Inspiration
Corner stores are a primary source of groceries in many communities, but healthy food is often expensive and under-purchased. We wanted to build an application that uses real-time community demand to make healthy items more affordable while helping small stores increase sales.
What we built
We built CornerCart Collective, an application that enables dynamic, demand-based pricing in corner stores. Customers interact through SMS or a simple interface to show interest in a product, and the system updates prices in real time as more people participate. The application also provides a dashboard for store owners to track demand and pricing changes.
How we built it
We developed a full-stack application with a backend service that processes user inputs and updates pricing using a demand-driven model:
Price=BasePrice−k⋅Demand
The system integrates an API for user interaction and a web dashboard for stores to visualize live data and manage inventory.
Challenges we faced
A key challenge was designing the application to work with minimal infrastructure since many corner stores lack advanced POS systems. We also had to ensure real-time updates were fast and reliable, and that the pricing logic balanced affordability for users with profitability for stores.
What we learned
We learned how to design scalable, real-time systems for low-tech environments and how technology can influence purchasing behavior. Building this application showed us how collective demand can be leveraged to solve real-world accessibility problems.
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