Khana

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Host event
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Inspiration

Coming from different backgrounds to different cultures, cities, or countries like ourselves, we had to overcome many difficulties with not being able to have proper home-cooked food a big difficulty.

Each year, 108 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion in food thrown away each year. Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted.

We wanted to offer a solution where we can solve both issues in one. This is an application that helps to reduce food waste along with offering home-cooked food to people who need it.

What it does

KHANA (Nepali word for “food”) is a free, easily-accessible web/phone application that allows users to share food. Some of its main functions are:

Food share/Host food event
Food request
Receive tokens for sharing food
Spend the tokens to receive food

How we built it

We used Flutter for the front end and Firebase as our backend and database. We utilized Canva to improve design aesthetics and User Experience.

Challenges we ran into

It was a little tough in the beginning to settle down on an idea and the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We decided to go with Nodejs and React at first but after running into some issues, we decided to use Flutter and Firebase. With multiple developers with different skill sets, we initially struggled with clearly communicating our intention and direction, as well as combining individual work into the overall project, but we gradually settled into the collaborative rhythm.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of our fully functioning app that displays our idea and we hope to further develop it to create a positive impact. Finally, we’re proud of the team’s accomplishments, as we were able to successfully brainstorm and execute our idea within limited time constraints.

What we learned

We discovered common challenges regarding food waste and realized some of our common struggles regarding food. Technically, we learned new skills such as working with Flutter flow and Firebase. We learned to adapt to the team with different skill sets and stay patient throughout the event.

What's next for Khana

We would like to implement Map and Location feature for a better user experience. Overall, we’d like to provide more functionality and improve user experience. Ideally, other features that could be possibly added are adding reviews, location sharing, etc.