Hoo's Menu

Hoo, hoo? Hoo's menú!

Inspiration

It was a late night. But not too late. And then we thought about food. Then, we thought about the time when each of us threw up because we ate an allergen. And so, hoo hoo. Hoo Hoo? Hoo's Menú! We then thought about out fellow classmates. We remembered overhearing them talk about their bad experience with the UVA dining halls. Stories of mislabeling, which led to painful stomachaches. What a tragedy. That's why we created Hoo's Menu.

What it does

Hoo's Menú provides easy-to-access allergen information in convenient-to-read format. It contains menu data of the three major dining halls at the University of Virginia (Runk, Newcomb, and Ohill). One key feature is the ability to filter out foods that contain specific allergens. For instance, if peanuts were selected to be filtered out, the menu data will adjust accordingly and exclude meals that contain peanuts.

How we built it

We used JavaScript to scrape data from the UVA dining website and parsed it. Then, using Deno and Heroku, we published the information onto a website. The practice of functional programming was utilized to simplify complicated tasks that process the menu data.

Challenges we ran into

Filtering the data, configuring the server, and parsing the menu data

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating a more efficient system that can help students to avoid allergens. As the students can choose the dining hall with their preferred menu before traveling, Hoo's Menu can indirectly contribute to reducing food waste in all three major dining halls.