MyPantry

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receipt upload and parsing
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jam with friends
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recipe generator

Inspiration: We were inspired by how much food goes to waste simply because people forget what’s in their fridge/pantry or don’t know what to make with what they already have. We wanted to make home cooking smarter, more sustainable, and more social. Everyone has leftovers, and everyone enjoys sharing meals, so we thought: why not build something that connects those ideas?

What it does: MyPantry turns your kitchen storage into a creative, social space. The website scans grocery receipts to automatically populate your digital pantry, recommends recipes tailored to your ingredients, and even lets you “jam” with friends by combining pantries to discover meals you can cook together. Users can upload their dishes, like and comment on others', and earn points for cooking sustainably.

How we built it: We built MyPantry with a React and TypeScript frontend styled with Tailwind CSS for a sleek, social-media-inspired interface. The backend runs on Node.js and Express, connecting to Google’s Gemini API for AI-driven receipt parsing and recipe recommendations. We used Prisma for database management, allowing users to store and update their pantry contents, track collaborations, and share posts. Together, these technologies create a seamless experience from ingredient recognition to social sharing.

Challenges we ran into: One of our biggest challenges was parsing messy grocery receipts and normalizing brand abbreviations into clear ingredient names. Integrating the AI model to interpret these correctly took several iterations of prompt engineering.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of: We’re proud to have built a fully functional end-to-end application that can read grocery receipts, populate a digital pantry, and generate recipes that make real use of what people already own. Integrating AI for sustainability was a highlight, showing how technology can reduce food waste in practical ways. Our “Jam Mode,” which allows friends to combine pantries and cook collaboratively, was another unique feature.

What we learned: Throughout the project, we learned how to connect LLMs and APIs like Gemini and Tavily to real-world data in a way that feels useful and intuitive. We gained valuable experience working collaboratively with Git and managing merges across multiple contributors. Most importantly, we learned how technology can turn an everyday activity like cooking into something more meaningful — social, sustainable, and fun.

What’s next for MyPantry: Next, we plan to integrate Instacart and other online grocery services to automatically parse virtual receipts. We also want to launch a “Group Jam” feature for multi-user cooking events and challenges, add badges and sustainability leaderboards to keep users engaged, and continue improving AI recognition for brands, quantities, and expiration tracking. Ultimately, our goal is to make at-home cooking more sustainable, social, and spontaneous by helping people use what they already have.