Inspiration
Seeing the amount of completely edible food in our school's trash cans motivated us to create this program. After all, the very food we throw away can be fed to the hungry and the needy to address the problem of food insecurity.
What it does
This project allows the user to create their own menu plan for their school based on the foods consumed by students and how much of it is wasted.
How we built it
We used Python for the backend, React and ChakraUI for the frontend, and Flask to link the two together.
Challenges we ran into
Our initial idea, tracking and simulating oil spills anywhere in the world, was already created as a fantastic web app, forcing us to ideate further and enhance our originality. Through much deliberation (4-5 hours), we established a novel and innovative idea that we were confident in. Nevertheless, we still faced difficulties in utilizing Flask to connect numerous specialized coding languages to create a comprehensive application. Furthermore, we constantly modified our APIs to grab the most paramount information from each of our sources.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Despite these challenges, we are confident that we have created a useful, global product. CustoMenu is not just an application, but a closed loop of infrastructure that adresses the production, distribution, and misuse of food.
What we learned
Solutions to food waste are preventative and far more effective than solutions to food insecurity, which simply redistribute food as a belated cure to a pressing problem.
What's next for CustoMenu
We can improve this by taking price levels of the foods into account to optimize the menu creation process in other distributors of foods such as hotels and restaurants. We are glad to know that CustoMenu can move its way up from schools and slowly become integral to the global food network.
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