Ok! It's a solid app and it works.
It's open sourced with a fun anti-capitalist license: https://gitlab.com/food-rescue-alliance/tomato/-/blob/development/LICENSE
It allows admins / organizers to:
- create a Donor/Contributer profile
- create a Dropoff/Distributor profile
- create a food rescue pickup between a Contributor and a Distributor site at a specific time during the day for specific days.
It allows users / gleaners to:
- See all the available food rescue pickups
- Read notes on the pickup and dropoff locations
- See a map of both sites and the route between the two.
The app is a self-described MVP - Minimum Viable Product. It works but does not have a lot of features. It hasn't had an update in a couple of years, but it is actively used (there's not much to update unless someone discloses vulns or they add a new feature).
They're talking about raising money and hiring a software engineer, but this is definitely a good candidate for a hackathon or FOSS programming program.
Some things that I would like to see (if I or other could code it for them):
- Ability of users filter open food rescue pick-ups by distance from their home to the pickup location, or their home to the dropoff location
- Ability of users to filter for specific days of the week (right now they can see specific dates, but if they want to see all shifts for the next several Mondays - for example - they aren't able to filter it).
One problem that I haven't figured out, is if a user / volunteer / gleaner commits to a recurring shift, I can't see how they drop their commitment to that shift. I've emailed FRA to see if I'm missing something.
Long and short, it's lacking some features that I've seen in other food rescue coordination software, but these software apps don't have a lot of features or functionality to begin with. Also the other apps seem to be for profit (even if under the aegis of "non-profit") and often have a dedicated software engineer. This is a FOSS app made by a bunch of volunteers.
Long and short, it absolutely beats a manually maintained spreadsheet! And it's not far behind other apps that have a dedicated software team.
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