MealFinder

On a budget? Don't know what to eat? Is this food good for you? If someone told me there's a website that can answer these questions AND help me donate, I would say it's too good to be true.

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Inspiration

Approximately a week ago, I volunteered at a local non-profit organization in Ames called Food-at-First. After serving people food, I began to think differently about eating and spending money. Although I didn't face a food shortage due to my financial situation, I still had a tight budget to spend on food. I currently live in Ames for college, and I am not too familiar with the place in general. As a college student who lives off-campus and doesn't dine on campus, I wanted to create something that could potentially help people who don't know what to eat or how much to spend. This was my inspiration for Meal Finder.

What it does

MealFinder is a website that curates a list of food items, their ingredients, total estimated cost, macros, and where you can buy them. It's not a meal planner; rather, it's an app that helps you find potential foods you may want to eat, and also provides you with their costs. This is extremely important for budgeting, but it doesn't stop there. MealFinder also provides macros, giving you a general idea of the nutritional quality of the food you are consuming. Its primary purpose is to help you find the cost of dishes, to help you budget your money, but it's an app that does more. Along with finding dishes, MealFinder also helps you create and share your meals. This allows people to share their likes and tastes with other users, creating a bigger community. Lastly, MealFinder has a page that allows you to donate to non-profit organizations, such as Food-at-First.

How we built it

I made MealFinder using FigmaMake, an AI tool that converts your ideas into websites.

Challenges we ran into

Competing against other teams without teammates is extremely difficult. I may be one of the only teams with just a single individual competing. This is partly because this is my first hackathon, and I was unaware that I needed to network beforehand to build a proper team. I assumed I would be able to just step in and be assigned a group. It was my own naivety that put me in such a terrible position. I know that there are individuals in this competition with more coding experience and overall better skills. Not only do people have that advantage, but they have teammates who can help them if they get stuck on problems, or even lay the foundation for the projects. I knew it would be impossible to build an app from scratch and overperform the competing teams. Therefore, I decided to focus more on a creative solution rather than stressing about the overall project. I needed to bring to life an idea that could give me an edge. Considering an idea that would bring "Social Good", stand out, and be constructed within the given timeframe was extremely challenging. In addition to this challenge, my overall skill set is extremely weak, considering I am a first-year software engineering student who has taken no coding classes. I therefore went and used online tools, such as website builders, even though I knew this was probably an extremely common format for a hackathon project. Yet, finding and building a website, even using website-building tools and AI, proved to be extremely challenging. This is because AI is not exactly at a state where it can build perfect websites. Fortunately, I eventually used a beta-testing feature of Figma ( UI Design Platform ), called Figma Make. After hours of searching and being stressed about building a project, I finally found a tool that could help me make what I needed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even though I didn't do much coding, I am proud of having assembled a project in my first-ever hackathon. Even if I don't win, I am happy that I was able to build something in the given time frame.

What we learned

I learned that in today's age, it's becoming increasingly easy to bring your ideas to life. I learned that if you have a good idea, there are tools available to help you develop it. I also learned that coding remains very important in this age of AI. Although my app is suitable for a proof of concept, it's not entirely functional.

What's next for MealFinder

I wish to learn backend development and then work on MealFinder, or bring my other ideas to life.

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