FridgeMates

Snap your fridge. Know what to eat before it goes bad.

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🏆 Winner: SURGE Prize Track, SFU Fall Hacks 2026

Can you name everything in your fridge? And what's expiring this week? FridgeMates keeps track of your fridge from one photo, so you always know what you have and what to eat first.

Inspiration

It's hard to keep track of what's in your fridge. Food gets pushed to the back, you forget about it, and it goes bad. Or you buy something you already had. Canadian households waste about $1,300 of food a year (Love Food Hate Waste Canada). Other fridge apps make you type in every item, so nobody keeps using them. We wanted a sidekick that tracks your fridge for you.

What it does

  • Scan with one photo: Gemini finds each item, counts it, and estimates when it expires. Fix a quantity or remove anything it got wrong, then add everything in one tap.
  • One organized list: your whole fridge, sorted so what's expiring soonest is at the top. Search and sort in a tap.
  • Food characters: each item has a mood that shows how urgent it is, from Cocky (lots of time) to Dramatic (eat today). Forgotten food becomes a Ghost.
  • Ate it? One tap: mark food as eaten, or adjust any date.
  • Overview: swipe to see everything by category and what to eat today.
  • Ask Jeppy: Jeppy, the Fall Hacks mascot, is your fridge manager. Tap a suggested question like "What should I cook?" or "What's about to expire?"
  • Reminders: your food texts you before it goes bad, at most twice a day.

How we built it

  • App: Expo (React Native + TypeScript), tested on a real iPhone.
  • Backend: Node + Express on Render, using the Google Gemini API to read the photo and return each item, its quantity, and its shelf life.
  • Expiry dates: the printed date when visible, otherwise an estimate. You can always edit it.

Challenges we ran into

  • Merging three people's code into the same screens.
  • Getting the app running on a real iPhone.
  • Keeping the app working when the backend is slow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Winning the SURGE Prize Track for solving an everyday problem.
  • Logging a whole fridge with one photo instead of typing.
  • A full flow on a real phone: scan → organized fridge → reminder → ask Jeppy.
  • An app that's fun to check, not a chore.

What we learned

How to use Gemini to read photos, build an iPhone app with Expo, and work together with git under time pressure.

What's next

  • Catch duplicates before you buy them again.
  • More accurate expiry dates using USDA FoodKeeper data.
  • Shared fridges for roommates and families.

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