Plate2Farm

Inspiration

Approximately 30-40% of the food supply in the US is wasted every year. It could have fed families, but instead, it fed landfills.

What it does

Plate2Farm is a mobile application-turned-initiative. Its goal is to encourage restaurants to take steps and create a food industry where no food goes to waste.

On Plate2Farm, restaurants have the ability to list food surplus that they may have after the day and distribute it to nearby farms for free. Likewise, the farms have the ability to claim food surplus listings made by businesses.

The application features a map that displays both businesses and farms within the user-defined range. The map is also linked to Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps, enabling users to access navigation directly through the Plate2Farm application.

How we built it

We built Plate2Farm using a lightweight React Native frontend with Expo for fast iteration, and Supabase for authentication, database, real-time features, and storage. We mapped local farms and restaurants using geolocation data, then built a matching system and direct chat feature so businesses can exchange surplus food in real-time. Everything was designed to be efficient, scalable, and demo-ready within 24 hours.

Challenges we ran into

Mainly, there were connection issues with our database, image handling, and storing. Additionally, we spent about 2 hours and a half debugging code, and finally we were able to find the main cause of the connection problem. One additional challenge was setting up the environments with React Native and Supabase, which we spent nearly an hour on. In summary, these were the challenges we faced while building this awesome app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishments include keeping our app easy to follow and simple to understand. We built a solution that solves a real environmental problem without overwhelming the user. Even with 50+ mapped locations, the app remains clean, fast, and easy to navigate. This combination of clarity, functionality, and real-world impact is what makes our project stand out.

What we learned

To be honest, we believe we learned a lot, and this hackathon was a valuable learning experience for us. Our main achievement and target was to build simple software and applications that solve global-level problems for people.

What's next for Plate2Farm

Our next goal is to make this app available to the public by publishing it to the Play Store and App Store. Before publishing, we plan to add extra features, such as an AI assistant that helps keep every single progress smooth and easy.

Built With

• reactnative
• supabase