A solution for surplus food

After several volunteer hours with food banks and pantries, four students from Dallas ISD’s School for the Talented and Gifted found a solution to help get much-needed food to those organizations. They recently launched FoodNex (foodnex.forward-future.org), an app that helps coordinate food donations between companies with surplus food and organizations who distribute food to those in need.

“When we volunteered at [food pantries and food banks], there would be weekly food distribution events to families and by the end of the event, we would often run out of food. That really hurt my heart because they wouldn’t receive the food that they needed,” TAG senior Dat Tran told the local NBC affiliate KXAS.

Tran, Ben Peckham and Akhil Peddikuppa, all students at TAG, along with Vedant Tapiavala, a DISD graduate and current Dartmouth College freshmen, are the brains and the hearts behind the app.

Through FoodNex, users can view nearby food pantries and banks, send custom donation requests to food banks and food pantries to ensure they can use the donation items, and create as many requests as they would like anytime to send to food banks and food pantries.

Peckham explained that 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in this country each year, primarily due to its approaching expiration date.

“If we could just reroute that food to the people who needed it, that could easily end food insecurity,” Peckham told the KXAS reporter.

FoodNex received funding assistance from Dartmouth College, and so far, the app has enabled approximately 70,000 pounds of food in North Texas, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay Area to be saved and distributed.

According to the developers, a web implementation of FoodNex will be released later this year for pantries who would prefer a desktop interface. They are also building an inventory management and volunteer management system, which are scheduled to be released as Phase 2 of FoodNex during the second quarter of 2023.

The students hope to build on the success of the app and wish to scale it for use nationwide.

FoodNex is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Do you ever have "seconds" that are good to eat but can't be sold at retail? Look for solutions like these in your own community, or ask for FoodNex to set up in your own backyard.