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Food & Beverage

Food Scanner

A mobile app that scans food labels, runs them against the Australian Food Standards Code, and produces compliance reports on the spot. Replaced three-hour paper inspections with twenty-minute digital ones.

Client: Food Distribution Company
Technologies: React Native, Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Google Vision API, AWS Lambda

Results

Inspection Time
3hrs/site20min/site
-89%
Compliance Score
72%98%
+36%
Sites Covered
312
+300%
Paper Usage
200 sheets/month0
-100%

The Problem

Every food safety inspection took 3+ hours per site. The quality team drove out with clipboards, checked labels by eye, wrote everything on paper forms, then came back to the office and typed it all into a spreadsheet. They had three sites and could barely keep up. Compliance scores were sitting around 72%, and when an auditor showed up, they'd scramble to find the paperwork. No real-time visibility across sites. They wouldn't know there was a problem until someone complained.

The Solution

We built a mobile-first scanning app that uses the phone camera to read food labels via OCR. It automatically checks the label data against the Australian Food Standards Code and flags anything that doesn't comply. The inspector walks through the site, scans items, takes photos with GPS tags, and the app generates a compliance report on the spot. There's a web dashboard that shows compliance status across all sites in real time, so the quality manager can see exactly what's happening without leaving the office.

Implementation Timeline

Week 1-2

Discovery

  • Went on-site with the quality team to shadow their inspections
  • Mapped the Food Standards Code requirements they actually needed to check
  • Identified which checks could be automated vs needed human judgement
Week 3-6

App Development

  • React Native mobile app with camera integration
  • Google Vision API for label OCR
  • Compliance rule engine matching Australian Food Standards Code
Week 7-9

Dashboard & Backend

  • FastAPI backend for data sync
  • PostgreSQL database
  • Web dashboard for multi-site monitoring
  • GPS-tagged photo evidence storage
Week 10-12

Testing & Rollout

  • Pilot at 3 existing sites
  • Refined OCR accuracy for Australian labels
  • Rolled out to 9 additional sites

We went from dreading audits to actually passing them first go. The inspectors love it too. They finish in 20 minutes and the reports are already done.

Quality Manager
Food Distribution Company

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