InvenTidy - A pantry tracking app

A smart pantry management solution that scans grocery receipts to automatically track your food inventory, helping reduce waste and save money.

Receipt Image Illustration

Demo

Tired of forgetting what's in your pantry? Frustrated by food waste and expired items? InvenTidy solves these problems with a smart, efficient approach to pantry management.

Project Overview

InvenTidy was developed as a group project for COMP1100 (Introduction to Software Innovation) at The University of Queensland. Our team identified a common problem among university students: food waste due to poor inventory management. Through customer discovery and hypothesis testing, we developed a pantry tracking app that makes inventory management effortless.

How It Works

Step 1: Scan Your Receipt

After grocery shopping, simply scan your receipt with your phone's camera. InvenTidy automatically extracts and adds items to your digital pantry.

Step 2: Manage Your Inventory

View all your groceries in one place. Mark items as used or remove them from your list with a simple tap.

Step 3: Get Reminders

Receive notifications about items approaching their expiration date, helping you use food before it goes bad.

Step 4: Save Money & Reduce Waste

By keeping track of what you have, you'll avoid buying duplicates and reduce food waste, ultimately saving money and helping the environment.

Key Features

  • Receipt scanning: Automatically add groceries to your inventory by taking a photo of your receipt
  • Simple inventory management: Easily mark items as used or remove them from your list
  • Expiration reminders: Get notified when food items are about to expire
  • User-friendly interface: Designed for efficiency and minimal effort
  • Money-saving insights: Track your grocery spending and reduce waste

Technologies Used

React Next.js JavaScript Tailwind CSS OpenAI HTML5 CSS3

Development Process

Using the Lean Startup methodology, we:

  1. Identified the problem: Food waste due to poor inventory management among university students
  2. Validated key hypotheses: Through customer interviews, we confirmed that people forget what's in their pantry and want a low-effort solution
  3. Developed a targeted solution: For students who value efficiency and want to save money by reducing food waste
  4. Built an MVP: In the final week, we implemented a working prototype with receipt scanning, inventory management, and a simple UI

Our approach was data-driven, with each feature validated through user testing. The feedback consistently confirmed our core value proposition: users wanted an effortless way to track pantry contents without manual data entry.

MVP Implementation

Using NextJS and OpenAI's vision capabilities, we built a functional prototype that could:

  1. Scan receipts: Extract grocery items using optical character recognition
  2. Manage inventory: Add items to a digital pantry and mark them as used
  3. Provide a simple interface: Designed for minimal user effort

Challenges & Lessons

Building InvenTidy presented several challenges:

  • Technical complexity: Implementing reliable receipt scanning and text extraction required significant research and testing
  • User expectations: Balancing feature richness with simplicity was a constant challenge
  • Time constraints: Delivering a functional MVP within the course timeframe required careful scope management

Key lessons learned:

  • The importance of early and continuous user feedback
  • The value of focusing on core functionality first
  • How to apply the Lean Startup methodology to validate assumptions before building
  • The power of solving a specific, well-defined problem rather than trying to address everything at once

"The most valuable insight from this project was learning that innovation isn't about building the most feature-rich product, but about solving a real problem in the most efficient way possible."

What's Next?

With more time and resources, InvenTidy could be enhanced with:

  • Improved OCR accuracy: More sophisticated receipt scanning and item recognition
  • Expiration date prediction: Smart algorithms to estimate when food items might expire
  • Recipe suggestions: Recommend meals based on what's in your pantry
  • Shopping list generation: Automatically create shopping lists based on what you're running low on
  • Integration with grocery delivery services: Order missing ingredients directly through the app

Conclusion

InvenTidy demonstrates how the Lean Startup methodology can be applied to solve real-world problems. The project provided valuable experience in customer discovery, hypothesis testing, and agile development—skills that are essential for any innovation endeavor.

Built as a group project for COMP1100 (Introduction to Software Innovation) at The University of Queensland.