Plates: A group food-ordering platform connecting people through convenient, affordable, and enjoyable meals.
- Problem
- Lack of affordable and diverse food options on campus
- Eating alone
- Lack of opportunities to meet new people in a non time-consuming way
- Alternatives like Doordash; address the idea of people feeling deterred by expensive delivery fees
- Students don’t have time nor means (e.g. car) to travel farther for food
- Market (as a reminder) & size (who and how big)
- TAM
- Nationwide students
- 18.9 million college students
- SAM
- Bay Area students: Northern California schools: Berkeley, SU, UCSF, USF, UCSC, Foothill College, De Anza College, Santa Clara University
- SOM
- Stanford students: over 16,000 degree-seeking students enrolled in bachelor’s, master’s, professional, and doctoral programs
- ~7,645 undergraduate students
- ~9,300 graduate students
- Stanford students: over 16,000 degree-seeking students enrolled in bachelor’s, master’s, professional, and doctoral programs
- Tech stack and why
- Frontend: React Native
- Easy to build app, wealth of resources online
- Clean user interface
- Backend: Firebase
- Track analytics
- Easy to manage and transfer data safely
- Authentication:
- School credentials (to sign up with school email)
- Email verification system
- Mobile payment gateway
- Credit card
- PayPal offers secure payment options
- BMC first pass (from in-class activity in 3A and your iterations)
Note: after our first pass of the BMC (pictured above), we continued to hone our target problem space and brainstorm potential solutions. See the other sections of this post for more details on our current project ideas.
- Early ethical challenges to consider.
- Non-Stanford students using our platform
- Predators on college students
- How to mitigate disposable packaging waste
- Users’ personal information (ex: delivery address, CC info, email address/phone number)
- Solution.
- A group food-ordering platform to bring people together over food in a convenient, affordable, and enjoyable experience.
- User journey:
- Signup for Plates account with school email
- Choose whether to eat alone or with a plate
- Browse through foods options for given day
- Select quantity, order pick-up time
- Select pickup location: 2 locations on campus
- Enter payment info
- Pick up the foods at specific time
- Option 1. Meet with new friends
Option 2. Grab the food and leave
