CherryDrop

Inspiration

CherryDrop was inspired by food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. However, there is one issue that all these apps have: commissions on businesses. While large businesses can easily handle the commissions, small businesses don't have the same luxury. Food delivery is now one of the largest sectors of the restaurant industry, and adapting to the ever-changing market is required to stay competitive. This is why we developed CherryDrop, a peer-to-peer delivery app that operates on a favor-based economy. With no delivery fees and no commissions, our proof-of-concept makes it easier than ever for small businesses to enter the delivery scene.

What it does

CherryDrop is a peer-to-peer delivery service operating on a favor-based economy geared towards college students. Essentially, CherryDrop utilizes a point system in which points can be used to request deliveries, and the only way you can get points is by completing deliveries. Each user starts with 100 points to order deliveries, and the amount of points a delivery requires is based on the size and distance of the order as well as the time of day and the weather. Currently, our app only calculates point costs based on the size of the order. These points have no real-world currency value and can not be bought or exchanged, only earned by completing deliveries.

How we built it

We built our backend in Python using FlaskAPI, and for our frontend we leveraged JavaScript and Tailwind CSS. We used MongoDB Atlas for our database.

Challenges we ran into

Two of us were first time hackers so there was a bit of a learning curve, such as installing and learning the Git workflow. We also didn't initially realize that one of our packages didn't support Python 1.13, so it took us a while to figure out that issue and then we eventually switched to Python 3.10. We also had never used MongoDB before so there was a learning curve there as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Two of us successfully completed our first hackathons! We are also proud of how much we learned this weekend.

What we learned

We learned about using Git for collaboration, using MongoDB, and how to create a full-stack application in a time crunch.

What's next for CherryDrop

We plan to add business accounts so that they can seamlessly manage their menus, prices, and orders all on one dashboard. We also want to expand our app for other universities and expand the delivery services to not just be food. We would also like to implement a reward system in which points can be exchanged for discounts or promotions at participating businesses.