Project: Free Lunch

Hi! We are graduate students from University of Pennsylvania majoring in EE, CIS and MCIT. Here is our project for FemmeHacks 2023.

Here is a demo: https://youtu.be/GdPXdiZE_RQ

Members

• Shuyue Wang
• Yuting Zheng
• Chuyan Chen
• Luyang Xie

Introduction

The Free Lunch project is an initiative aimed at providing access to free lunch options in local areas and reducing food waste.

For students who are on a tight budget, the project offers an easy and convenient way to find free lunch options near their universities. Busy professionals can also benefit from the project as they can find lunch options that suit their limited time schedule, without sacrificing their health and wellbeing.

Additionally, for those who simply love a good deal and are always on the lookout for affordable food options, the Free Lunch project can be a valuable resource. With its comprehensive database of events that offer free lunches, you're sure to find something that meets your needs and budget.

The Free Lunch project is more than just a resource for finding free food, it's a community effort to reduce food waste and promote food security for everyone. Join us today and help us spread the word about this important initiative!

Inspiration

There are many free lunches in events hosted by different departments in University of Pennsylvania. However, despite the best intentions of the organizers, it's not uncommon for them to order more food than is needed, leading to a significant amount of leftovers and food waste. To address this issue, the "Looking for Free Lunch" web platform was created.

The platform provides a simple and convenient solution for people to post and search for available free lunch options in the local area. By using this platform, individuals who haven't yet eaten can quickly find and take advantage of free lunch opportunities nearby, helping to reduce food waste and support sustainability.

Organizers of events can also benefit from the platform as it can help them to gauge the demand for food and order more accurately, reducing the amount of leftovers and food waste. In this way, the "Looking for Free Lunch" platform promotes a more sustainable and community-driven approach to food distribution and waste reduction.

What it does

• Post current free food events, times and locations with additional food descriptions
• Look for the newest events post to quickly know where to eat free food.
• Add comment on the free food events to let people know the update of the event status (like food has been eaten out) or more detailed description and pictures of the event.
• User can delete the event by typing string containing delete in the comment.

How we built it

Built with

Figma, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, React.JS, Node.JS, Git, mockAPI

How to run

In the project directory, you can run:

npm install

npm start

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in your browser.

The page will reload when you make changes.
You may also see any lint errors in the console.

Challenges we ran into

Since we are not so familiar with figma, the user iterface design is a little bit challenging for us.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Reducing food waste by connecting people with surplus food to those who need it, preventing the waste of perfectly good food and helping to combat hunger.

What we learned

How to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, tools, and techniques in React development, and how to continue to grow your skills and knowledge over time. How to work as part of a team, sharing responsibilities and collaborating on the development process.

What's next for FreeLunch

In the future, the web app can be improved by

• Add event tags and food tags so people can not only attracted by free food, but also the amazing events
• Filter events by locations or tags
• Recommend free lunch events to users based on their locations
• implementing chat functions of user log-in and real-time chatting, to make the platform more secure and improve the communication efficiency.