munch

Home screen featuring custom Vancouver details
Home screen dark mode with Edmonton details

Inspiration

This project is inspired by the frustrating moment we share where we can't decide as a group where to go have lunch. Most of the time, the common answer given is "I'm okay with anything", which while nice to hear, doesn't really help lead the conversation anywhere.

What it does

munch solves this problem by having the group join a quick Tinder-like session of swiping left/right on nearby restaurants. Joining a session can be as easy as airdropping the share link with your friends, dropping them straight into the lobby without any extra inputs. The most agreed-upon restaurant will be suggested to the users, while also immediately offering to show them directions to get there.

How we built it

munch is a React Native app deployed as a website, communicating with a python server that reads in restaurants from a Tiger Data Postgres database. We utilized Expo for its intuitive development environment and ease of testing on mobile devices.

Challenges we ran into

One of the primary challenges we ran into was justifying why the user should prefer to use this app. We tackled this problem by aiming to remove as much friction as possible to make this app easy to pick up and use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Utilizing Apple's airdrop feature to easily send out invites to other users that are using iPhones.
Crawling algorithm that populates our Tiger Data database with up-to-date restaurant data within a given city.
Suggestion algorithm that ranks restaurants based on proximity, number of reviews, and rating before providing them to the user
Our implementation of the Tiger Data database that stores the restaurant data, user accounts, images and session data.

What we learned

Allowing AI to fill in the gaps in our knowledge allows us to exercise more creative freedom with the project.

What's next for munch

This app is currently tailored to Vancouver, but the plan is to populate the database for other major cities like Toronto.
Expanding the web app into an app that users can download from the app store