Real Food Calculator Comps Project '18
Throughout Fall 2018 and Winter 2019, our team worked with the Carleton campus student group, the Real Food Calculator,
to improve their workflow. Twice a year they record all of Bon Appetit’s purchases and calculate the percentage of items
in the Carleton dining hall that are real as defined by the national Real Food Challenge. Ultimately, we aimed to help
them more efficiently and effectively meet their goal of shifting institutional spending from conventional to “real” food.
After informally interviewing them about their process and observing their work sessions, we decided to create a website and
database system to help ease the process of data entry and to visualize food purchasing trends. On the data entry portion of
our website, we improved their data entry process by reducing redundant researching and typing. On the visualization portion
of our website, we have provided graphical representations that allow RFC volunteers to get a general idea of the real food
scene at Carleton and to identify which specific products are most beneficial to shift from conventional to real. Overall,
our tool will allow the RFC at Carleton to spend less time entering data and more time and effort increasing the total real
food percentage at Carleton.
Our tool consists of both a database and website that acts as an interface for and way to visualize data in the database.
Our database is hosted on a computer running PostgreSQL. We have constructed an API to interact with with website using
Python Flask and Psycopg as a database adapter. Our website uses Python Flask as a web framework which renders the HTML
and Javascript files in the templates folder.
There is an extended User Guide and Developer Guide. Contact us if interested in details.