Simon's Bodega

Inspiration

We started by brainstorming ways a real small business could benefit from Super Bowl buzz, like a local car dealership reacting to Toyota ads. During that discussion, one of our teammates, Simon, lit up at the idea of a bodega. That sparked a pivot: instead of helping a local business, what if we built something for the smallest and most overlooked businesses: bodegas, delis, food trucks. They have an opportunity to benefit off the big company adverts for their own businesses. From there, Simon’s Bodega was born: an imaginary NYC bodega run entirely by AI during the Super Bowl.

What it does

Simon’s Bodega is an AI-powered social media account that reacts to the Super Bowl in real time. The system uses Reddit API to extract live social media trends. When it detects a culturally relevant post, such as a comments on a Coca-Cola ad, a touchdown, a turnover, or halftime, it automatically generates and posts a meme that references the exact moment. There is no human social media manager, no pre-written ads, and no brand deals. Everything happens automatically in seconds, simulating how a real small food and beverage business could capitalize on Super Bowl buzz without spending millions.

How we built it

We built Simon’s Bodega as a fully automated, real-time AI system.

• Live data ingestion
• Text and posts from Reddit API to detect relevant and trending events like touchdowns, turnovers, and commercials
• Live social trend signals to confirm cultural relevance and prevent spam
• Context engine

We maintain a live game and culture state that tracks what is happening, how people are reacting, and whether it is relevant for a bodega to respond. AI decision-making: A sentiment-detection model that analyzes the reactions and emotions of people who post about culturally relevant moments. Content generation: When triggered, the AI creates post to Simon Bodega’s X page containing a meme generated from people’s reactions to moments from the game. Autonomous posting: The system posts directly to X and logs detection, decision, and posting times to demonstrate real-time performance.

Challenges we ran into

• API search and signal quality. Finding live signals that were fast, reliable, and meaningful without overwhelming the system took careful tuning.
• Humor and relevance. Generating memes that are actually funny and specific to this year’s Super Bowl was harder than basic text generation.
• Restraint. Teaching the AI when not to post was just as important as teaching it when to react.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• The system works end to end, live and deployed.
• The AI produces timely, relevant, and on-brand output without human intervention.
• Small businesses can react to massive cultural moments in real time using AI.

What we learned

• Real-time relevance matters more than perfect content.
• Constraint makes AI output significantly better.

What's next for Simon's Bodega

• Expanding beyond the Super Bowl to other live events like playoffs, award shows, and local sports.
• Integrating POS systems so promotions can translate directly into real-world sales.

Built With

• python