DishDash

Problem: Poor meal planning (which is among the biggest reasons for food waste). Individuals and couples find themselves having to cook big portions due to the amount in which ingredients are sold. The goods that remain are difficult to use up. The same food must be eaten for multiple days, often ending up left over and spoiling. Families face similar problems, especially with regards to overcooking and bad portion control. Existing solutions for meal planning are cumbersome and time intensive.

Solution: A streamlined meal planning app, that allows you to build a plan around a few ingredients, that you can use to cook multiple different foods. You find recipes, generate a shopping list and fit cooking into your schedule. In contrast to existing solutions, DishDash doesn't require you to waste time staying on top of your pantry contents and always searching for recipes to utilize leftovers. Instead it focuses on helping you buy only what you can use through a fully personalized experience.

Impact: DishDash can help properly plan meals and grocery shopping with a few clicks, allowing you to use up all of the ingredients you buy and not having to cook massive amounts of one food, that eventually goes bad. It can personalize your portion size, leading to less leftovers and allows families to buy in bulk, save money, and organize their cooking with their schedule. These problems account for up to 53 % of food waste and DishDash can solve them, by helping users to build better habits.

Feasibility: The basic version of the app could be build with roughly 21k EUR, with perhaps the personalization element being the hardest one to implement (possibly added later). Building the database of foods presents some difficulties and expenses, but could be (at least partially) outsourced to the user community with various gamification element or contests. As for funding, there could be a possibility of affiliation with a supermarket chain (the ingredients would match their product range).

What you built: We did a preliminary study of the target problem and customer needs and figured out the key features, which we then transformed into an UI design, with which we did some very simple prototyping/user testing. The design is here: https://www.figma.com/file/YC12FD2JzDYbEZQpRcZkjR/DishDash-UI?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&t=VpakJ9rjzv5Ii93V-1

What you had before: Nothing (just the problem, as we have very much built a solution for the problems we face).

What comes next: Next, we would aim to validate the idea, as to (in a more quantitative way) figure out what demand there is for such a solution. Then, we would like to explore funding options, preferably as a CSR/self-promotion project for a food or supermarket brand, but if commercial potential is found during the validation, perhaps even as a startup.

Video: https://youtu.be/9fzjR4EJdVs