[Smart Living] FoodPath

Inspiration

What is one of life's fundamental need and greatest satisfactions? What can connect people, place and culture? Food.

There is currently no platform that combines food and experience. It's hard to quickly and efficiently to decide the smartest way to eat staying in or going out, all tailored for the individual user. There is missing or incomplete information unified with comparative pricing, journey mapping, analyzing foot traffic, and predicting end-to-end experience duration.

Currently food is just a product or commodity, but it can be an experience.

Smart, bespoke, and delicious experiences for food can be everyday because it provides one of life’s most fundamental and greatest satisfactions.

What it does

With FoodPath, bespoke and delicious experiences are possible everyday - smarter eating for your pallet & wallet whether staying in or going out.

FoodPath creates a custom food experience for you, reflecting your profile - whether you're vegan, a meat-lover, or need comfort food. Whether you have to travel from Point A to Point B, or simply exploring an area, FoodPath creates tailored recommended food journeys for eating in and out. Based on your need and preferences, FoodPath suggests places to eat or to purchase ingredients for you to cook at home, all optimized for time, distance, and price. It provides the smartest path for an enhanced food experience journey.

James lives in Central, and he is planning an evening to listen to an orchestra performance with his buddies on a Saturday night. Before that, they will have to grab dinner first. He has a HK$300 budget. With FoodPath, James can simply enter his travel origin and destination, preference for food, and the FoodPath creates a bespoke food journey pathway for him, optimized for time and cost. The suggested locations for dining suggested based on his preference and restaurant reviews. James does not need to waste time planning the logistics, and also gets to enjoy an enhanced food experience that evening. On the way back, James would like to buy some ingredients for a special meal he'd like to cook for his mom. He enters his recipe into FoodPath, and gets an optimized path to get all the local ingredients he needs at the best prices and using the least amount of time.

FoodPath will remember your preferences and continuously refine and personalize its suggestions and outcome for the user.

How we built it

We developed optimisation algorithms to optimise several factors including distance, price, time and custom preferences. Created predictive algorithms using a machine learning model to estimate foot traffic and approximate waiting time for food destinations on your tailored journey. Using case-base similarity measures and clustering algorithms, we identified the likelihood of your preferred food options and recommend them.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenges revolved around data availability: data from restaurants, data from supermarkets and retailers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We believe this concept and platform can drastically improve and enhance the food experience. Food is a huge industry. Food is increasingly viewed as not just a commodity but an experience. As people interact with food everyday, this can definitely make our everyday lives smarter and more enjoyable.

Our team effort. We delved incredibly deep, challenged each other and concluded on an idea that made us unilaterally say ‘this is the one’.

What we learned

Three things are essential to developing a business: Your TAM (total accessible market) Your Data (what, where, how) Your USP (unique selling point)

What's next for [Smart Living] FoodPath

We will always be passionate about food and with the right support believe this product can be successful.

This will become a mobile application. Restaurants and retailers would sign up to it, and we envision many users and contributors joining the platform. Our three users are: everyday foodies, experience writing enthusiasts and all restaurants and retailers in the food & beverage industry.