Mumum – A Fun Way to Decide What to Eat Today

🧠 Inspiration

We built Mumum to solve a problem we all face:

“What should I eat today?”

Most food apps are either too serious or overloaded with options. We wanted to make something casual, playful, and social — especially for students, young adults, and busy people who just want a quick nudge or a fun push to make a meal decision. The idea came from noticing that people often ask their friends or go through social feeds for inspiration — so why not build a light app around that?

🍱 What it does

Mumum is a mobile app that helps users decide what to eat each day through fun interactions and social inspiration. It includes:

• 🎮 Food Spin Game – Pick a dish from a fun 16-tile randomizer.
• 👫 Friend Feed – See what your friends ate today.
• 🗳 Poll of the Day – Vote on dish polls by country, or create one if it doesn’t exist yet.
• 🔥 Trending Dishes – Discover what's popular in your country this week, based on friend votes and history.
• 📅 Meal History – Track your own eating log by week or month.

Everything is optimized for quick interaction and casual delight.

🛠 How we built it

• Frontend: Expo SDK 53 (React Native), NativeWind for styling, [TypeScript].
• Backend: Supabase (Postgres, Auth, RLS, Edge Functions, Storage).
• Image API: Pexels API to fetch beautiful food images.

We also store a local dataset of 2,000+ dishes in the frontend, and allow users to submit custom dishes if something is missing.

⚠️ Challenges we ran into

• Setting up Supabase guest login using fake email/passwords and managing secure sessions.
• Building a poll system that supports daily, per-country voting with no repeat polls.
• Filtering trending dishes by country based on two separate data sources: votes and history.
• Keeping the UI minimal but still rich enough to deliver value and delight.
• Managing a hybrid data structure (local JSON + server-side custom dish support).

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Fully functional MVP built by a solo indie developer.
• Smooth friend system with food feed and history.
• Gamified experience that feels playful, not overwhelming.
• Clean UI that works for both iOS and Android with full localization in 11 languages.

📚 What we learned

• Supabase is a powerful backend platform, especially with features like RLS (Row-Level Security), Edge Functions, and Postgres integration.

• However, as a solo developer, we faced several frustrating issues that slowed down development:

  • Documentation for key features like Apple Sign-In often led to broken links (e.g. 404 pages), which made it difficult to set up authentication properly.
  • When RLS (Row-Level Security) blocks a query, no error message is returned—only an empty array. This makes debugging extremely confusing, especially for newcomers.
  • Supabase Edge Functions lack basic logging or runtime visibility, making them risky to use. We avoided using them in production due to the absence of error feedback.
  • The CLI, while powerful, introduced friction. Every new RLS rule or migration required a separate file, making it hard to track what’s currently active. The development workflow felt heavier than expected.

• It’s possible that our struggles reflect a mismatch between Supabase’s tools and the way we approached development as an indie solo dev. That said, we hope the team continues improving the developer experience — especially for small teams and individuals.

🚀 What's next for Mumum – A Fun Way to Decide What to Eat Today

• Add a home screen widget to show daily dish suggestions.
• Allow users to upload images of meals (with moderation).
• Introduce Pro features: themes, extended history, special game modes.
• Add gamification: streaks, badges, meal achievements.
• Explore lightweight social sharing loops for viral growth.

Built With

• cli
• expo.io
• fastlane
• nativewind
• node.js
• pexels-api
• postgresql
• react-native
• supabase
• supabase-auth
• supabase-edge-functions
• supabase-rls
• supabase-storage
• typescript