An iOS application to allow excess food to be donated by restaurants to qualified food banks that work with the needy. This application is a medium where donors who wish to donate their excess food sign up and post excess food whenever it becomes available. Qualified food banks in the vicinity can claim the food. Please refer the wiki for detailed design.
Restaurants and qualified food banks from Greater Seattle Area are the target demography. There has been no efficient way to donate food for the hungry Americans in Seattle until now. Once the application is developed, majority of our advertising budget will focus on websites or other media platforms frequented by members of the restaurants or food banks in Seattle.
Across the world, there are so many restaurants that waste tons of excess food everyday. The primary purpose of this application is to establish a link between those restaurants and qualified food banks to enable excess food donation. Only legitimate food banks will be able to access information about excess food. This application also helps create awareness of “food waste” and “hunger” in communities.
Each month Seattle food service businesses dispose more than 1000 tons of edible food. Meanwhile according to the USDA, Washington has the 9th highest level of hunger in the nation and 39% of people served by Washington food banks are children. There are many volunteering organizations that are trying to donate the excess food from restaurants to charity, but all the communication happens through telephone or in-person conversation. There is no proper mobile application that helps donate excess food yet. Hence a mobile application for donating excess food will help reduce food wastage and also feed the needy.
We will be using firebase analytics model to generate time to time reports on number of donations happening over a particular time frame. Attach Rate & download numbers might show about application popularity but application will be successful only if it is able to feed a large number of people fulfilling its primary purpose. We will be analyzing the number of donations happening through the application & number of active restaurants & food banks connected through our system to analyze application success over time.
Seattle does not have any mobile application for food donation & interlinking restaurants/organizations to food banks/charities. This would be first of its kind application in the Washington State. During our study we have also found two mobile applications which does food donation and does similar work.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wastenofood/id866786935?mt=8 This application mainly talks about California, could not find any details about people using it in Seattle.
This does not exactly deal with leftovers, It mainly focuses on creating free pantries where people go and take food whenever they are hungry. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ampleharvest/id348829918?mt=8
- Funding/Donations- Millions of dollars are donated annually to support such non-profit causes & organizations in Washington state alone. Feeding America Organization & Washington State Department of Health help in generating revenue for such activities across the state. Donors who provide food in good faith are protected by both State and Federal Good Samaritan laws designed to encourage donation of needed foods and protect donors. We plan to get some external funding for the project once we have a stable prototype version of the application ready.
- Advertisements- Advertisements will also be used initially to generate basic revenue for the application maintenance & support.