Food A.I. Hackathon
The Hackathon
Compete for $1,000 in a one-day hackathon focused on building with real food data — across nutrition, supply chain, cost intelligence, ingredient transparency, and sustainability.
Show up. Pick a problem space. Form a team or go solo. Build something real in a few hours. Demo it. Win prizes. Oh yeah — free food.
No food tech experience required. You'll get everything you need on-site, including access to the Journey Foods API: a powerful set of endpoints built by food scientists and engineers. Pull real data on ingredient analysis, nutritional profiling, supply chain sourcing, cost benchmarks, sustainability metrics, and more. It's your shortcut to building something smart without needing a PhD in food science or a procurement degree.
Problem Spaces
General focus is consumer and industry solutions — pick one or combine:
What's Really in My Food? Help people understand what they're actually eating. Build apps that break down ingredients, flag allergens, compare products, or surface healthier alternatives at the grocery store.
Eat Better, Spend Less Make healthy eating more accessible. Meal planners that optimize for nutrition and budget, tools that find affordable ingredient substitutes, or apps that help families eat well without overspending.
Know Where It Comes From Give consumers and brands visibility into how food moves through the supply chain. Source tracking, local vs. imported comparisons, seasonal availability, or tools that surface what's actually behind the label — and what it costs to get it there.
The Cost of Food Build tools that make ingredient and supply chain costs transparent. Price comparison engines, commodity risk alerts, reformulation tools that hit a target cost, or dashboards that show brands where their margins are going. Food is a financial problem as much as a nutrition one.
Feed the Planet Tackle the environmental side of food. Carbon footprint calculators for grocery carts, apps that reduce food waste, or tools that help people make sustainable choices without the guesswork.
Wildcard — Build whatever you want. As long as it touches food, it's fair game.
Schedule
1:00 PM — Doors open. Check in, light bites served. Meet people, form teams.
1:30 PM — Kickoff. Journey Foods overview, problem spaces introduced, API and tools walkthrough.
2:00 – 6:30 PM — Build time. Mentors circulate. Technical support on-site. Dinner served.
6:30 – 7:30 PM — Demo presentations. Each team gets 3 minutes to show what they built.
7:30 – 8:00 PM — Judging, awards, and closing.
Prizes
$1,000 in cash prizes plus a pipeline to Georgia Tech's Food & Beverage Accelerator program, and more.
Categories include Best Overall, Most Creative, Best Data Insight, and People's Choice. Full prize details announced at kickoff.
Who should come
Developers. Vibe coders. Entrepreneurs. Hackers. Students. Designers who want to prototype. Founders exploring food tech. Anyone who wants to build something in a day using AI-powered food data.
You don't need to be a CS major or a senior engineer. If you can prompt, you can build here.
Bring a laptop. Teams of 2–4 recommended, but solo builders are welcome too.
The Venue
Science Square Labs is a life sciences and innovation hub on Georgia Tech's Westside campus. 13 floors of lab and collaboration space with skyline views, right at the intersection of North Avenue and Northside Drive. You'll be building at the center of Atlanta's emerging biotech district.
About Journey Foods
Journey Foods is an AI-powered software platform for the global food industry. Their technology helps food companies discover, monitor, and optimize ingredients across nutrition, cost, sustainability, and supply chain — drawing on a database of over 56 billion ingredient insights. From startups formulating their first product to enterprises managing massive portfolios, Journey Foods is building the intelligence layer for how food gets made.
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Journey Foods — AI-powered ingredient intelligence and supply chain platform