Wegmans Tracing Program: Traceability and Food Safety

The Wegmans Tracing Program can serve the Wegmans and local Rochester community in ensuring that products will have traceable product history; targeting specific products in the event of a recall.

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Inspiration

After looking more into food waste and Danny Wegman's impact on Wegmans Food Markets, Inc.'s stance on food safety, we decided to try something new and challenging for both of us. We decided to focus our scope on the greater Rochester community: the local Wegmans and the local farms that distribute goods to them.

What it does

Wegmans' products each come with a Universal Product Code number that can be inputted on the weighing stations and during check-out to pinpoint the identity of the item. Our project would implement a secondary UPC number, that could pinpoint the history of that product. The secondary UPC number would be developed and scanned upon arrival at Wegmans, scanned by customers upon checkout, and accessible by the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

In the event of a recalled product, Wegmans would be able to locate the products to remove based on the information in the database that correlates with the recall report.

How we built it

We utilized PostgreSQL to set up the database, HTML, and CSS to simulate the program software, and Javascript to develop the RESTful API which updates and organizes the database when the UPC is scanned by the customers upon checkout. The flowchart was created using Miro to visualize the process.

Challenges we ran into

Ashley's background is primarily in multimedia and Xinyi's background is primarily in software engineering. We did not know each other before WiCHacks and we decided to form a team because we sat next to each other. We spent a good amount of time trying to find a common ground between both of our expertise and choosing what project to pursue. We realized a third of the way through that this project might've been a bit ambitious for the two of us to take on, but we were determined to create it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The code runs smoothly and the simulated program software works the way we want it to. This was Ashley's first hackathon and Xinyi's first hackathon in-person (she was virtual last year) so we are really happy that we were able to complete a project.

What we learned

How to implement an API in Javascript and connect it to the database. Ashley learned more about HTML and CSS, and we both learned more about the importance of food safety and food waste.

What's next for Wegmans Tracing Program: Traceability and Food Safety

We were able to visualize the workflow of how the program would work, for the future it would be nice to be able to actually scan a UPC code. Potentially matching the aesthetic and functionality of the current program software utilized in Wegmans' weighing station/check-out station to create a unified system. Additionally, this could be implemented into the Wegmans website and mobile application to easily access when necessary and so a notification pop-up could be implemented when the customer's purchased products are recalled. The product would be deleted after the recall finished. Also, the stakeholders will be able to better manage the system and database such as adding new products to it.

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