Granola Marketplace

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project is twofold. Millions of people in the US suffer from food insecurity or live in food deserts, where healthy, fresh, low-cost or free food is difficult to find. Also, for general lovers of fresh produce, sometimes locating the nearest farmers' markets or farms, as well as what they sell, is difficult. We also wanted to raise awareness surrounding the necessity of eating organic food as opposed to processed foods which contribute negatively to our environment in terms of carbon emissions and other forms of pollution. We decided to make a tool that links people to farms, farmer's markets, and low-cost fresh food providers. With this, farmers, farmers’ markets, and community organizations get more publicity, while consumers get the fresh food they need and desire!

What it does

Granola Marketplace is an all-encompassing stop for farmers and farmers' market enthusiasts alike. Granola Marketplace is effectively a database of all the farmer's markets, gleaner’s organizations, and food farms in the United States. With a hundreds-strong database of farmers' markets, food farms, and gleaning organizations across the United States, shoppers can easily locate the market nearest to them for fresh, organic produce, baked goods, and handmade artifacts. Users can go on the website, search for keywords or by date, and browse the listings that come up. They can also add their own listing. Granola Marketplace aims to improve the accessibility of healthy and organic food overall and connect family farms with potential customers

How I built it

We created an Amazon S3 Static Server to host the website. We did this by opening a new server, changing user permissions, and uploading our website files. We used Tockify, a calendar-based web application that allows users to submit any type of special event. We catered it specifically for the use of sharing farmer’s market. The website used a combination of HTML and Bootstrap. When the user wants to submit an event, a user is redirected to the Tockify widget where they input all of the information surrounding the event. Once the event is submitted, it stores the event information and appends it to our event listings in an organized and consistent manner.

Challenges I ran into

We had trouble coming up with an idea to start the competition and with the S3 bucket. Since none of us had ever used AWS buckets, creating one with the correct user permissions was a challenge and took us far longer than expected.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Our team is very proud of the fact that we didn’t know each other, come from the same schools, or have the same skills before HackMIT but by the end we had a functioning website and an idea we can all get behind. All of us learned new skills from web design, using web plugins, servers, and CSS.

What I learned

We learned about Amazon AWS S3 buckets. Before HackMIT I had only ever used EC2 instances (even for static websites --oops). I was really excited to learn how to use the S3 buckets and try out some new design ideas. Also during the hackathon our team learned how to implement Tockify into a website to make an interactive calendar. Our team was formed in the team formation round the day of, as all of us arrived without a group. But over the past 24 hours, we bonded over code and managed to trade many stories about both CS and our lives, getting to know each other on a personal level and truly coming together. Friendships from hackathons are unforgettable.

What's next for Granola Marketplace

Next we will be polishing the site. Adding a spot to view CSA and adding a social networking component to discuss events. we hope to add a function to search by location, and a map to the website so people can more easily locate themselves in relation to the markets. We also hope to introduce a Wikipedia-style editing of listings, where anyone can post or edit or verify the accuracy of a listing. We hope to introduce Granola Marketplace to farmer’s markets across the nation and make this website a hub for lovers of fresh produce, farmers, and people searching for fresh produce. In the future, we are also considering adding a food-buddy option, where we partner with farms and community organizations across the country. Users can sign up for an account to link themselves to a farm or community organization providing fresh and low cost or free produce. This would allow food insecure people especially greater access to healthy, fresh food.

Built With

• bookstrap
• css
• html
• javascript
• tockify