During the last week of my first trimester of MissionU, I participated in a 24-hour Hack-A-Thon Project. During this time my partner and I brainstormed topics which we felt passionate about with ideas ranging from homelessness to health and fitness and many in between. We decided to center our project around a combination of 2 topics that we both felt very passionate about: population hunger and the immense amount food waste in America. With a topic nailed down, we hit the ground running and spent the next day wholeheartedly invested in developing a solution for the question: “How might we alleviate local hunger and decrease the massive amount of food waste?”

The next 22 hours were full of brainstorming, wireframing, prototyping, iterating, and developing our final idea of LOF (Left Over Food). LOF is a platform which would allow local homeless shelters, food banks, food programs (etc.,) to connect directly to their surrounding food businesses (grocery stores, bakeries, caterers) who are willing to donate their excess food. Using the LOF App food banks and shelters can search for LOFF’s (Left Over Food Forms) that local businesses fill out and post onto a live stream when they have an excess of food that will otherwise be discarded. The LOFF is a small questionnaire which informs the shelters about the type of food available for pickup, the estimated quantity it will feed, how much room is needed to transport the food, location and pick-up times, and direct points of contact. If a shelter sees an available food pick-up they would like to claim, they simply reserve the LOFF, show up at the informed location to gather their LOF, bring the food back those who are in need, and fight food waste!

We presented the LOF App to an audience of about 30 people with a panel of 3 judges. Our idea was awarded “Idea with the Most Potential Impact on Users”! We are super excited to continue developing LOF and to see how this idea will grow to impact local communities!