Sustainabite is a platform where restaurants and organizations can come together to promote reduced food waste. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption, including food prepared by restaurants, is lost or wasted globally.
Our team enjoys working on projects that bring about a positive social impact and connect with the world at large. In many communities worldwide, where food is either scarce or lacking in nutritional value, it is crucial for us to develop technology as a means to offer both nourishment to underserved communities, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and preserve natural resources.
Sustainabite is a system that connects restaurants with non-profit organizations, such as food banks and homeless shelters, in their area to deliver food left at the restaurant at the end of each day. After a participating restaurant's workday is over, they can log in specific items on their menu that are left over or unserved. Once they update this list, organizations within a 10-mile radius are notified of this update and are asked whether they accept the request to order the food. If the request is accepted, the restaurant confirms it, and a volunteer at the organization comes to pick it up within the hour.
For the User Interface, we used React Native and Typescript. For the backend, where we sent post and get requests to manage requests from the users to the database, we used Node.js, Express.js, and Google Cloud server. For the backend, where we sent post and get requests to manage requests from the users to the database, we used We included registration pages, login pages, restaurant menus, and a request page to handle food requests between restaurants and organizations. To store the registration tables for both organizations and restaurants, and restaurant menus, we used Google Cloud SQL for MySQL. Additionally, to read the text from the images taken by restaurants to upload a digitized version of their menu, we use Google Cloud Vision API. After these menus were digitized, we found a way to parse through the text, and separate menu items from their ingredients, as many menus contain ingredients and common allergens found in their food. To do this, we implemented Google Cloud Natural Language API, using entities such as DISH, CONSUMER_FOOD, and INGREDIENT, to assign menu items and their respective ingredients. Moreover, we used Google Cloud Geocoding API in order to geo-code addresses of restaurants to latitude and longitude coordinates. We used USDA Food Data Central API to derive nutritional facts about the dishes. Finally, we use ProCreate to design our logo.
We faced several challenges throughout our project. Connecting to Google Cloud and setting up a remote database was difficult, especially since it was our first experience with the service. We also struggled to incorporate an image upload feature into our app. Initially, we considered using Google Drive links, but we recognized that would be inconvenient and were determined to make the app as user-friendly as possible. To tackle this, we researched various methods for iOS image selection to provide a smoother experience for our users. Additionally, reading and parsing the menu images posed another challenge. We had to learn how to effectively combine our individual skill sets, as we had similar project ideas but needed to figure out how to implement them and leverage each other's strengths to complete the tasks at hand. These obstacles pushed us to innovate and develop creative solutions, ultimately making our project more robust and adaptable.
We are proud of our creative and aesthetically pleasing User Interface. Additionally, we accomplished a substantial portion of our stretch goals including leveraging a machine learning algorithm through the Google Cloud Natural Language API to analyze menu data, including nutritional information about the food we serve to individuals, which emphasizes their well-being. We have also integrated a map feature to provide a visual overview of restaurant locations nearby. Ultimately, we are very proud of ourselves for coming together from different parts of the world to create a product that will have a sustainable impact everywhere.