UniEats: Turning Every Student Kitchen into a Campus Restaurant

The inspiration for UniEats came from three widespread challenges in university life:

Food Insecurity: Many students struggle to afford healthy meals, relying on expensive takeout or vending machines.
Social Isolation: Cooking is often a solitary act, yet food is the ultimate connector. We wanted to bridge the gap between students who love to cook and those who need a meal.
Sustainability: Campus cafeterias and student apartments generate massive food waste. Our "Rescue Meal" concept was born to turn potential waste into affordable nutrition.

We asked ourselves: What if every student apartment could be a micro-restaurant, fostering community and fighting hunger simultaneously?

UniEats is a dual-sided marketplace app designed exclusively for university students:

For Customers (Hungry Students):

Marketplace Feed: Browse fresh, homemade meals cooked by verified peers nearby.
Rescue Meals: Find discounted "last-minute" portions to save money and reduce waste.
Request System: Craving something specific? Post a "Meal Request" with your budget, and a local student chef can accept the challenge.
Seamless Ordering: Real-time order tracking from "Pending" to "Pickup".

For Cookers (Student Chefs):

Monetize Passion: Turn cooking skills into extra income by selling extra portions.
Manage Orders: A dedicated dashboard to track incoming orders, earnings, and meal status in real-time.

We pivoted to a modern, highly scalable Serverless tech stack focused on speed and real-time interaction.

Tech Stack:

Frontend: React 19 with TypeScript for rigorous type safety and component modularity.
Build Tool: Vite for lightning-fast Hot Module Replacement (HMR).
Styling: Tailwind CSS v4 for a utility-first, responsive design. We utilized lucide-react for consistent iconography and framer-motion for fluid UI transitions.
Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS): Firebase Ecosystem
- Authentication: Google OAuth, strictly gated to ensure users sign in with trusted university emails (e.g., .edu.au).
- Firestore (NoSQL): Stores user profiles, meal listings, and orders.
- Hosting: Rapid, scalable deployment.

Key Technical Implementations:

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): We implemented a dynamic role system directly in the frontend logic. The app state intelligently switches views based on the user's active profile (Customer vs. Cooker), ensuring a tailored experience without needing two separate apps.
Real-Time Data Sync: Using Firestore's onSnapshot listeners, we created a live feed. When a cooker posts a meal, the UI updates instantly across all connected campus clients without refreshing.
Calculated Economics: We engineered a robust pricing model handled strictly in our type definitions to ensure financial accuracy: Total Price = Meal Price + Buyer Fee + Maker Fee.

State Management: Coordinating the complex state between the Feed, Order History, and Profile views while handling asynchronous user data. We solved this by lifting state up to the main App component and using strict TypeScript interfaces to prevent data inconsistency.
Trust & Safety: Designing a system that feels safe for students was paramount. We engineered a "Strike Count" and "Ban" system tied to user profiles to allow moderation of bad actors.
Temporal Logic: Managing timezones for meal pickup windows required precise handling using date-fns to ensure a student doesn't accidentally order a lunch that was cooked yesterday.

Full-Stack Agility: We successfully pivoted our architecture mid-hackathon, integrating a complete authentication flow, database CRUD operations, and complex UI logic within the time limit.
UX Design: We learned how to design for two distinct user personas within a single interface, using conditional rendering to keep the experience intuitive for both buyers and sellers.
Scalability: By leveraging Firebase, our platform is serverless and ready to scale from a single campus to hundreds without infrastructure bottlenecks.

UniEats isn't just an app; it's a movement to make campus life tastier, cheaper, and more connected. 🌮🍕🥗