PlatePals

Home Page
Recipe Recommendation (1/2)
Recipe Recommendation (2/2)
Food Bank Search
Feed the Need (Front Page, 1/3)
Feed the Need (Registration, 2/3)
Feed the Need (Restaurants, 3/3)
Resources
About Our Team

Social Welfare Track

A static copy of this website can be accessed at: https://cs-people.bu.edu/tanth/projects/platepals/

Inspiration

PlatePals is built to help families who are struggling financially and cannot afford food. PlatePals provides services that help them afford this basic human need.

What it does

Food Recommendation: Users enter their budget into the search bar located at the home page. PlatePals will recommend a list of food items and a set of recipes accordingly.
Food Bank Search: If the users need more help, PlatePals provides a second feature that helps the user search for food banks around Boston. Users enter their ZIP code and PlatePals will show you food banks around them accordingly.
Feed the Need: PlatePals provides a program named Feed the Need that connects people in need to restaurant owners. Restaurant owners who have leftover food to spare can connect to and donate their food to people in need via our website.
Resources: PlatePals also provides a list of resources that may be of help for people in need.

How we built it

We built PlatePals using the Django framework in the backend, and rendered the frontend using Django templates. We styled the front pages with basic CSS but we also employed tailwindCSS for some of the elements.

Challenges we ran into

Most of our team have limited experience, but we managed to learn the basics of the Django framework and design a neat user interface within 22 hours. We also had some communication problems along the way, but through many discussions, we managed to resolve any conflict we had.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of completing the project within 22 hours, making sure everything is functional, and ensuring our user experience is satisfactory. We are also proud to have learnt a lot of python, html and css conventions and shortcuts too along the way.

What we learned

We learned how to operate a basic Django framework in the backend, and rendering Django templates in the frontend dynamically. We also learnt how to style CSS using tailwindCSS, and many conventions and shortcuts to do it.