TravelBite

Inspiration

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a lawsuit against Disney in February 2024, four months after his wife, Dr. Kanokporn Tangsuan, ate a meal a restaurant in Disney Springs that staff guaranteed was safe for her dairy and nut allergies. Disney lawyers said he cannot pursue a court hearing because he signed up for a free trial of Disney+ in 2019, where he agreed not to sue Disney in the small print.

How scandalous. Infuriating. Utter legal tomfoolery.

Our app cannot fully prevent tragedies like this, but the story made us realize the gravity of allergies. Especially with how diverse the North American culinary landscape is, we know friends who have difficulties eating out in places with dishes they can't pronounce. We want to make that experience a little bit easier for them.

What it does

Translates menu items with a simple scan
Analyze possible allergens for each menu item
Save you from the social interaction you're too anxious to do with the waiter
Do this all in lightning speed because Groq +_+

How we built it

Cross-platform front-end with React Native Expo
Node.js and Express for back-end
Google Cloud Vision for image to text recognition and Google Cloud Translate for translation
Groq API to query for possible allergens
Figma for mockups, prototypes, design assets, and ideation

Challenges we ran into

Defining a product that was suitable for the likely use cases, and making multiple pivots along the way
Setting up React Native Expo and working within its constraints

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Moving from hard coded, mock data to actually consuming images and getting data out of them!
Getting a working product and maintaining sanity, positivity, and health in a hackathon
First times for many of us; first hackathon, first mobile app, first Hack the North

What we learned

Planning ahead is good but planning even further ahead is better
Knowledge sharing through taking up different roles and collaborating

What's next for TravelBite

Expand to accommodate more types of dietary restrictions (ex: vegans, halal, kosher, keto, low-sugar, non-pizza-eating humans, etc.)
Develop a user profile to quickly filter menus based on your personal needs and preferences.