From Idea to MVP: Our Food Waste Reduction Platform

About a month ago, I shared how my internship and final semester project came together perfectly, giving me the chance to dive into Laravel while building a platform to reduce food waste by connecting businesses with surplus food.

I’m excited to say we’re nearly done!

Over the past few weeks, our team has been polishing the app — fixing bugs, refining the user experience, and preparing for launch. The backend and database will be hosted soon, making the platform live and accessible.

Looking Back at the Tech Stack:

• Backend: PHP Laravel — my internship experience gave me a strong foundation here, and I’ve deepened my understanding of scalable architecture, API development, and ORM relationships.


• Frontend: React — my teammate has built a clean, responsive UI that complements the functionality we’ve worked hard to develop on the backend, resulting in a seamless user experience across the platform.


• Database: MySQL — we designed the schema to handle complex relationships efficiently, especially for managing users, food listings, and organization profiles.

This project has been both technically and personally rewarding. We’ve approached it like a real-world product, learning through every challenge.

What’s Next:

• Deploying the backend and database online


• Final usability testing


• Gathering feedback for improvements

If you’ve worked on something similar or have any tips for hosting and scaling Laravel apps, I’d love to connect and learn from your experience.

Thanks for following along — more updates soon!