SnackSafe

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Inspiration

With increasing globalization and diversity, our dietary needs are the widest-ranging they've ever been. In the US alone, 33 million people have food allergies, which doesn't take into account other dietary restrictions that vegetarians and vegans have. In our group alone, we have more than ten allergies and dietary restrictions combined, with one of our members suffering from severe anaphylactic shock frequently from his dairy, egg, nut, and fruit allergies. He frequently has to deal with restaurants being careless with cross-contamination or wrong orders, which has led to countless emergencies that should have been prevented.

To combat this, we developed SnackSafe, a lightweight mobile web app that aims to make people feel comfortable and secure when eating out.

What it does

SnackSafe acts as a one-stop shop for anyone with dietary needs. Users can search through local restaurants, browse labeled menus, look at reviews specifically focused on allergy safety, and quickly see how safe a restaurant is with a holistic safety rating that accompanies the traditional star rating. Users can get a more customizable experience by selecting their allergens/dietary restrictions, which helps SnackSafe recommend restaurants that would be a good fit. By providing this information with just a few taps, SnackSafe revolutionizes the dining experience, making it safer and more personalized.

How we built it

We built SnackSafe with React, NextJS, Tailwind CSS, and Supabase. We leveraged the Yelp API to get restaurant data and populate our own databases. In addition, we used Supabase's Google OAuth Provider to log in users and save their allergen preferences. We decided not to make an app since users usually don't want to install another app on their phones. Instead, we developed a lightweight mobile-friendly website that is built to scale down to phone screens so users can quickly go to SnackSafe and search up restaurants.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first time working with full-stack development, which made it difficult to set up our project initially. In addition, we ran into a lot of restrictions with Yelp's API. We had never done UI/UX design before either, so we had to put in a lot of effort to make SnackSafe look the way it does!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Because this HackIllinois was the first hackathon for the majority of our members, we are proud of completing an minimum viable product for our idea. Tangentially, we all gained valuable experience in roles we previously were not acquainted with whether it be frontend, backend, UI design, or web-dev in general.

What we learned

Throughout this process, we gained much insight into the difficulties and challenges that arise in collaboration as well as resolving conflicting ideas. We also learned how to successfully navigate through burnout during the intense development cycles.

What's next for SnackSafe

While we've built out most of the frontend and the basic structure for SnackSafe, we want to enhance the functionality of SnackSafe so that we can actually launch it, such as accurate location search. We plan to leverage generative AI to analyze existing data to develop baseline safety ratings that will attract users, and to eventually analyze user reviews to calculate a holistic safety rating.