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Cafeteria Food Waste Tracker

Shows which dishes get thrown away so kitchens cook less waste.

Intermediate36h2–3 people15/20 fit
TL;DR

Build Cafeteria Food Waste Tracker for campus and office cafeterias in ~36h with 2–3 people. Stack: Next.js + Vision LLM + Charts.

Why it wins: Measurable impact with a clear operator action.

Build flow

01 · Problem
Kitchens don’t know which dishes end up in the bin, so they keep over-cooking them.
02 · Solution
Photo of trays at return. A vision model estimates leftovers per dish and charts waste by menu item.
03 · Build
  1. 1Menu + dish setup
  2. 2Vision estimate per photo
  3. 3Aggregate by dish/day
  4. 4Recommendations view
04 · Demo
Upload 5 tray photos → waste-by-dish chart → “cook less of dish X on Mondays”.

MVP checklist

  • Tray photo capture
  • Leftover estimate per dish
  • Waste trend chart
  • Prep recommendations

Tech stack

TechRole
Next.jsFrontend + API routes
Vision LLMImage understanding
ChartsData visualisation

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