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Freebites

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Overview

This is a mobile app using Expo and React Native app that allows users to take pictures of free food opportunities on campus. We’re currently in the final stages of Testflight right now, but we’ll be releasing on the App Store soon. Android support will follow soon :)

Background

Hungry College Students

So I’m (currently) a college student and on a very limited meal plan. I’m actually currently working on this using the “stay at the dining hall a REALLY long time for two meals” strat :)

The Idea

This is not an original idea; Tufts actually has an email list run by Tufts’ Food Rescue program. My friend Sarah approached me last summer and asked if I was interested in turning this elist into an app. I said “down” and now we’re here.

The Tech Stack

We dockerize the backend for deployment on Cloud Run.

What it does

Users are able to take pictures, add tags and post about free food opportunities on campus. They’ll also recieve notifications when there is free food on campus.

Users can filter through posts by allergies, dietary restrictions, and by location. We’ve also implemented a reporting and admin system to review and take down posts if needed.

This is currently marketed towards Tufts students, but this project is definitely expandable towards campuses and walkable communities across the US. We’ll probably add features for localization.

Process

Solo (Dev) Leveling

Bringing it back to the summer of 2023. I had no idea what I was doing, as I had very limited webdev experience, so I on and off figured out my initial tech stack:

After the struggles of setting up the development environment, the school year began. I built the core of the app; mapping out the routing and planning the file structure, implementing the authentication.

A few weeks in though, I realized that I needed a little help doing all the coding. So Sarah and I recruited a team.

Solo (ish) Leading

It was a little stressful; I mean I just went from 0 experience to leading a team of 6 with 1 month of experience. Trial by fire I suppose.

As the app expanded, we ended up settling on this tech stack:

We recruited a project manager (her name’s Anneka, she’s great), and she did a lot to steer us into a professional workflow. The team did a lot of good work through the year; I juggled being a tech lead while also getting my hands dirty with development; I handled the posting feature.

When summer rolled around, there was no more school, so we could finally focus on Freebites.

Just…Leading I guess

We expanded the team a little, swapped project managers (Anneka graduated) to our super talented and current PM, Sristi, and I stepped fully into the leader role along with my friend Johnny. I still did (and I do) development; I handled deployment, created initial CI/CD pipelines and Johnny and I restructured the repository. But most of my work turned to code review and ensuring consistency and training my devs to become better, an investment that’s paying out a ton in the long run.

I had the opportunity to intern at a startup called Markit during this summer; being a startup, the wonderful folks there had me work on literally everything. My experience there was instrumental in helping me develop a structured workflow.

I’ll talk more when the app is released. I’m sure things will from 0 to 100 real quick haha.