SaveRe

SaveRe It, Don’t Waste It

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Inspiration

Every year, Americans throw away nearly 60 million tons of food. Not because they want to, but because they forget what they bought or when it expires. As college students, we faced the same problem: overbuying groceries, forgetting what’s in the fridge, and wasting food. That’s why we built SaveRe - an AI companion that helps you use your groceries before it's too late.

What it does

SaveRe automatically turns grocery receipts into a clean, searchable inventory: estimating expiration dates, tracking groceries, and suggesting recipes that use what you already have.

Users can:

  • Upload a photo of a receipt or add groceries manually
  • View an updated inventory and calendar with expiration tracking
  • Get AI-generated recipes to use ingredients before they go bad
  • Save and regenerate recipes to minimize waste

By helping people make the most of what they buy, SaveRe promotes sustainable living: reducing food waste, saving money, and encouraging mindful consumption for a greener future.

How we built it

Frontend: Next.js, App Router, and TailwindCSS for a mobile-first PWA experience

Backend: FastAPI (Python) with MongoDB, Tesseract OCR (Receipt Parsing), Gemini API (custom API routes w/ prompts for recipe generation and expiration predictions)

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge we ran into a team with multiple first time hackers was designing a framework for an app that would be easy to use. While developing, we found that we were making our app's features unnecessarily complicated. We went through many different designs in order to make it as intuitive as possible for our users. Finding this perfect balance between complex features and a simple, intuitive UI was our biggest struggle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of our teamwork and determination in a fast-paced environment, especially as rookies. We’re also proud that our project tackles a critical sustainability challenge, reducing food waste and promoting smarter consumption.

What we learned

How important research and brainstorming is: before we even wrote our first line of code, we designed the entire application, from Mongoose models and API routes to the frontend structure and user flow. This planning phase helped us identify challenges early, align our goals, and build a system that was intuitive.

What's next for SaveRe

Moving forward, we hope to:

  • Continue developing and refining our features to better serve our users
  • Add computer vision models so that users can scan individual groceries
  • Works towards our vision of a waste-free planet!

Discord usernames: Abir: ribadiba Emily: pancake_face James: jimmaz1 Victoria: l3mxny

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