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Project Description

Food banks have always had problems with getting food to families, and in recent times this demand is increasing even more. Even before the pandemic, Saint Mary's Food Bank and other food banks have had trouble making sure that food is not thrown away and wasted, which is caused in part by the uncertainty of what food will come through the food banks, meaning the distribution of food products is not uniform. For example, in the United States alone:

  • Every year, 80 billion pounds of food are thrown away in the United States.
  • Food banks across America receive different food products in varying quantities from donors throughout the country.
  • Foodbank workers may be unfamiliar with products given to the food bank.
All of these factors create an inefficiency that is hard to solve with the changing supplies available to the food banks and with the lack of knowledge to best use the food. This is where our group, Fridge Filler, comes in. With our sponsors, Richard Rushforth and Sean Ryan, we have partnered with Saint Mary's Food Bank (SMFBA) to help solve this problem. They believe that the current interaction between the food banks and the people who use them is inefficient. The way they interact now is that people come into the food bank, receive a box full of whatever the food bank has available at that time, and then the person has to try and figure out what they can make with what they have just received. This is fine for some people, but not all people like to cook or know what they can make with the ingredients given. Along with the uncertainty of what will be at the food bank creates problems with the families and makes everything more chaotic. Fridge Filler aims to create a mobile application that can serve as a go-between for the food banks and the people and families that use the food banks. That way, families can figure out what food to cook with the ingredients they have through simple, easy-to-follow recipes. The app also can recommend places to pick up missing ingredients and even a way to sync what you have at home with the app. The overall goal of the application is to help families effortlessly plan meals and to help ensure that the food at the distribution sites is used more effectively.

Envisioned Solution

Our solution is a mobile application and website that will help solve the food efficacy problem. This app will primarily provide recipes to the food bank employees and those who are served by the food bank. The app will have some navigation to better help those find a nearby food bank and analytics for the food bank to better know what the user is eating. The main features of the app will include:

The recipes which will be provided by SMFB, and will be dynamically recommended based on the ingredients of the user's pantry and what they received at the food bank. The recipes will be simple and will provide the user with a way to use some of the more foreign food. With this, the employees of the food bank and the users can also print out these recipes to easily display and use recipes at the food sites or for personal use. Navigation will also be a big part of the project. The app will help with navigation to food sites and different grocery stores to help fill in missing ingredients for the user. The last part of the app is the analytics and survey part. This will run in the background and will collect data on what recipes people are using, how much they like these recipes, and what food is getting used, which could help determine how food is distributed to the different food sites in the future. If this works then SMFB and other food banks across the nation can help use this app to help distribute the food they are given and what food to buy. We are designing several databases, one for Virtual pantry, one for Recipes, one for Distribution Sites, one for SNAP retailers and one for Users.



The System Diagram

system diagram

Technologies

Our project requires a variety of technologies to create a robust and stable solution to the problem requirements our clients have presented to us. The technologies used in this project are listed below:

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