Challenge
Millions of people face food insecurity daily, while households and restaurants discard significant amounts of perfectly edible food. Existing food sharing solutions are often clunky, lack real-time coordination, or fail to offer a user-friendly mobile experience tailored for local communities.
Solution
DishedOut is a mobile-first application that empowers users to donate or claim home-cooked or surplus meals in their vicinity. With seamless listing, navigation, and real-time notifications, it helps reduce waste and nourish communities by making food-sharing both easy and safe.
Key Features
- Real-time Meal Listings: Users can post meals with descriptions, images, and availability windows.
- Google Maps Integration: Pick-up locations are displayed using the Maps API, with location auto-complete and route guidance.
- Firebase Authentication: Secure sign-in and user account management using email and social logins.
- Push Notifications: Users receive instant alerts for new meals nearby via Firebase Cloud Messaging.
- Animated UI: Smooth, responsive Lottie animations enhance the experience of posting, claiming, and confirming meals.
- Role-based Access: Lenders and recipients have tailored experiences within the app to streamline interactions.
- Messenging: Lenders and recipients can message each other directly with real-time messenging.
Technology Stack
- Flutter: The cross-platform framework powering the mobile UI.
- Riverpod: Robust state management that ensures reactive updates across features like form handling, user state, and listings.
- Firebase:
- Auth for secure user sign-ins
- Firestore for storing and querying meal posts
- Storage for uploading and displaying food images
- Cloud Functions for background automation and verifications
- Cloud Messaging for real-time push alerts
- Lottie: Used to animate icons and transitions, enriching the app’s interactivity.
- Google Maps API: Enables location auto-complete, place selection, and navigation for pick-up logistics.
Further Work
To expand DishedOut’s impact, future development will include:
- Ratings & Trust Scores: Encourage reliability through peer ratings and feedback.
- Multi-language Support: Broaden accessibility in diverse communities.
- Admin Dashboard: Tools for moderators to oversee listings and flag misuse.
- Analytics Dashboard: Help donors and partners track impact through metrics like meals shared and food waste reduced.
By building on community goodwill and mobile technology, DishedOut aims to create a sustainable ecosystem where no good meal goes to waste.