Why did I make Pantry, and what Problem does it Solve?

Hi! This is the first developer note, so I wanted to talk about the main mission of Pantry, what inspired me to create it, and who else it might be able to help.

Mission

The mission of Pantry is simply to reduce food waste. As you may know from the landing page, over 200 billion dollars worth of food goes to waste in the U.S. each year. Thats about $1500 from each family- or over 300lbs of food per person. Meanwhile, people still go hungry, all over the world, and in our communities.

I believe that this waste is simply a result of inefficient planning. We go to the fridge, grab something that looks yummy, and then grocery day comes around, and as we put stuff in the fridge we find the lettuce we forgot to eat. We throw it away because its bad now, and the cycle repeats.

I hope that with Pantry, we can collectively choose what we eat more deliberately, so that collectively, over time, we waste less food. If we waste less, we will buy less, and if we buy less, we save money and the planet.

Inspiration

The inspiration and the mission are tightly coupled, I would often find my own food, or a roommates' in the back of the fridge, forgotten about. Not only did it smell, but the fact that we were wasting good food, that we could have eaten had we done so in the correct order, frustrated me, and I wanted a solution.

My freshman year of college, I created a spreadsheet where I would manually enter all my grocery items and nutritional facts for each. When I would eat a meal, I could select what I ate and it would tell my my macros for the meal and running total for the day. Now, I'm a junior and I've finally tried to turn the janky spreadsheet into a functional web application, that can hopefully be useful to others with these problems- (If the macro counter caught your attention, don't worry, it will be a future feature).

Who is this for?

Literally anyone! Of course I'm developing this app for my problems, so it may be best fit for other college students like myself, particularly features like roommate groups- but I see no reason for anyone not to use it. I think it's perfect for families, for singles, and anyone in any phase of life who wants to track their groceries.