Senior Destiny Frett recalls sitting in front of a television set as a child, studying each cooking program that came on the screen. She took note of anything that furthered her own skill set: proportions, ingredient combinations or certain textures.
The cultivation of this passion and one for computer science set Frett on a journey to combine the two in a way that would help others from beyond a business standpoint.
It wasn’t until this August that Frett finalized an app to share ways for others with a culinary passion to cut corners in their own kitchen. Food Companion is an app used to keep track of the amount of food you have, expiration dates and specific food. There are features for making a grocery list and even making recipes based on the food in your pantry.
“I always grew up surrounded by food and I’ve always had a love for food. It sounds so gluttonous but I love… the art of what goes into making food,” Frett said. “The fact that you can have several ingredients and blend them all together and make a painting to me is so interesting.”
However, this app was not a standalone project. During her junior year at Elon, Frett was recruited for an internship at a soup kitchen in Sydney, Australia where she created a very simple version of the app as a way for soup kitchens to organize their inventory.
The internship taught her the skills needed to create the app. Food Companion is essentially Frett’s expansion on that project, along with the creative twists she added, make it more conducive to everyday routines.
“[The internship] gave me a lot of experience dealing with the business side of my field because it helped me realize that I often times won’t be interacting with people that know computer science,” Frett said. “So, I had to write things down in a way that would allow a regular person would understand.”
Though Frett faced hardships and technical difficulties during the creation of the app, she overcame them and now plans to update and expand on Food Companion — free of cost. She finds that simply giving back to her peers is rewarding enough.
“What makes me most proud about my app is the fact that I thought it then made it,” Frett said. “This app was an idea that I kept thinking about, and one day I decided to write down everything that came to mind and realized that it could actually happen, and it did. My app showed me that if I have an idea, I should pursue it. Everything that can be imagined can be done.”