ReDeal

Inspiration

We all have an interest in sustainability, and as we were brainstorming, we wanted to increase incentives for both consumers and businesses to act more sustainably. We came across the unpredictable and inefficient consumer goods supply chain: anything from shipment delays to inaccurate projections can result in excess inventory. The fate of lotion that will never be sold, or apples that are destined to go bad, is usually the landfill. In fact, every year, $163 billion of inventory is thrown away and $74 billion of food is wasted as well. The beauty, food service, and grocery industries are particularly affected due to the short shelf life of their products.

With ReDeal, businesses can sell their excess products and foods that may be expiring soon to anyone who wants to save money, encouraging both businesses to make money on surplus goods, and consumers to buy necessities at a fraction of the cost.

What it does

ReDeal is a platform connecting businesses that need to sell their excess inventory including soon-to-be-expired items to consumers who would like affordable items. Users log in, providing their current address to find nearby stores, and then can search for stores. Upon clicking on a store, users can browse product listings and ask questions about a particular food. Item listings in the database include the price, discount, quantity left, images of the product, product type, and the time until expiration, so consumers can make decisions accordingly. Consumers can add items to their cart and purchase the item for pickup. Business pages each have their own database-generated product listings and a dynamically calculated distance from the current user. The events tab highlights special goods that communities might need during holiday seasons that are specially priced (for example candy for Halloween or turkeys for Thanksgiving), further increasing accessibility to popular surplus products.

How we built it

We used the Retool platform to build and connect our UI with our backend. Our businesses and products database is hosted locally on Retool and was filled manually. From this database, each business and product page is generated algorithmically using MongoDB. User inputs for questions on foods on the store page were created using the ChatGPT API to dynamically generate text. Other data inputs, like in the Login page and the Search page are saved and interpreted using JavaScript. Our logo was designed in Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Three of us were beginner hackers who had no experience using code to build a product. We taught ourselves JavaScript, how to use MongoDB, the ChatGPT API, and the Google Maps API in addition to mastering the intricate functionalities of Retool.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We really enjoyed the difficulty and perseverance of creating something from scratch while learning new technologies at the same time. Our team worked well together and played to each other’s strengths and we’re satisfied with our collective hard work.

What we learned

For some of us, it was our first time building a UI, working with back-end databases, or coding on a project outside of classwork. Beyond the technical skills, we also learned a lot about ideating for real-world applications and accounting for consumer concerns.

What's next for ReDeal

There’s a lot more we can add! We’re hoping to add a robust business-end platform to add products, track earnings, and track environmental benefits! On the consumer end, we also hope to add an environmental benefits tracker in addition to dollars saved, and the ability to save product types and get notified when a product (e.g. baby formula) is listed on the app. We would also like to add SNAP/EBT card payment eligibility to further increase food access. Eventually, we’d like to launch on a small scale and partner with companies as a sustainable inventory management solution contributing to CSR (corporate social responsibility).

Ethics of ReDeal (for the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Prize)

Excess inventory and food waste pose a critical challenge facing society today. Consumerism, which incentivizes corporations to overproduce to guarantee meeting demand, generates massive amounts of waste and contributes to the current climate crisis. At the same time, critical goods like food and household items remain unaffordable to low-income families.

ReDeal aims to address these equity issues, but a core ethical challenge of our app is our focus on connecting almost-expired and surplus goods to low-income people at affordable prices. These products may not be at their peak quality, resulting in already disadvantaged people buying lower-quality products. To provide transparency, we included the impending expiration dates for products in their item details and will delist items that have expired. Another issue was the lack of accessibility to the businesses we included. Consumers living in food deserts or those without access to transportation do not have the ability to use our services and purchase affordable items from these stores. To alleviate this, we included a measure of the distance of each business from the user, however, far-away businesses will not truly be accessible until we introduce a delivery service.

Another service that we intend to implement in the full version is SNAP/EBT card eligibility for approved grocery products. This would further improve affordability and access for our target audience.