Robin Food

Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Robin Food is his more benign elder brother who gives food.

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Inspiration

When we entered university, we realised the abundance of events with catered food. As with most of such events, over-ordering is a common occurrence (40% of people over-cater!) and large portions of food go into the bin unconsumed. This got us thinking about the bigger picture: the state of catering in Singapore. Everyday, hundreds of catering events take place, with a large portion of this food going to waste. Imagine the impact that bringing these unconsumed food to those who need it more will have! This is the gap we aim to bridge.

What it does

Our application connects caterers with welfare organisations who already have an existing system of transporting food back to their organisations.

The application is an intuitive Android and iOS app where caterers can post events across Singapore where there are leftover food and charities can accept those that they want and communicate with caterers to pick up the food. New events are updated in real-time and caterers can not only track the events they have posted, there is also a leaderboard where they can see their standing and enjoy a friendly competition with other caterers over their corporate social responsibility.

How I built it

We built the application using React-Native and Firebase.

Challenges I ran into

Initially, we started off working on the app using both React-Native and Java. Because its our first time using either tech stacks, we were not really sure which was more suited to our purpose. Halfway through HacknRoll, we realised React-Native was more suited to our purpose as it could run on both OS platforms, which meant hours of coding and debugging efforts spent on Android Studio did not make it into the final product.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Even though some of our Java code did not make into the final product, we were ultimately very heartened to have started off with a 2-pronged approach. Because of this, we learnt more than we otherwise would (like creating an Android app with login functionalities, a Bottom Navigation Bar and the works in Java).

What I learned

Coding an application with no prior experience is definitely a very steep learning curve. Youtube tutorials are not always what you need, some lateral thinking and Googling is required to tweak the solution into one that fits our purpose.

What's next for Robin Food

We plan to talk to stakeholders such as Neo Garden, Orange Clove, Food Bank SG and Willing Hearts to find out what other functionalities they want from such an app. We aim to distribute this app to interested stakeholders in SG and beyond so that this perennial issue of food wastage can be minimised.

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