By Emily von Buttlar
Features Editor
The Iskandar brothers built an app, GroceryBuddies, to battle the rise in COVID-19 cases by ensuring residents’ safety while grocery shopping.
Costa Sophomore Dylan Iskandar and Chadwick 8th grader Winston Iskandar were awarded first place with their app GroceryBuddies in the Congressional App Challenge on Nov. 17. The Iskandars developed GroceryBuddies from scratch over a period of four to five months to promote local, family-owned businesses to ensure residents in the community could safely partake in grocery shopping.
“We decided to create an app to help prevent the virus from spreading to other individuals who are most vulnerable,” Dylan said. “Furthermore, we also realized that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local and family-owned businesses were being driven out of business due to the lack of customers and traffic.”
The Congressional App Challenge was created to engage both students and Congress members on the importance of computer science, technology, engineering, science and math. The Iskandars were inspired to compete in the challenge after one of their close relatives caught COVID-19 while grocery shopping. They initially heard about the competition from a previous winner of the app competition, Charles Lui, who was also from California’s 33rd congressional district, which includes parts of Los Angeles County.
“The judges believed this was a unique idea that solved a clear problem,” California’s 33rd Congressional District Representative Ted Lieu said. “They liked that the app lets you pick from the stores so that the recipients of the groceries get exactly what they needed. The judges also loved the community and volunteer aspect of this app.”
According to Dylan, they were extremely happy with the feedback from Lieu. They were announced as the winners by Lieu with the 16 other contestants and judges Marc Fisher, Howard Stall and William Goodin in a private Zoom meeting.
“I think it was very important to us because we had the opportunity to change lives during this really bad pandemic,” Dylan said. “We decided to use our love for software development to help our local community.”
GroceryBuddies is a nonprofit website and app that has a number of unique features that help people find new local or family-owned businesses. Each store’s products will also be featured on the app to promote the stores and increase income and traffic for each business.
“Unlike apps like Amazon Fresh and Instacart, GroceryBuddies is a free alternative tailored to your local community,” Dylan said. “As the number of users grows, we seek ways to accommodate a wider variety of customers in many different communities.”
People can also sign up as volunteers to drop off groceries at other people’s homes through a no-contact delivery process. According to Dylan, all shoppers will wear a mask and gloves throughout their delivery and will frequently sanitize. The Iskandars have also included a return policy and a private information policy where they can be directly involved in any questions their customers or volunteers have.
“Customers can contact us via the ‘contact us’ page, and we will work with [them] directly to correct the issue,” Dylan said. “Some potential solutions include going back to get [their] desired items or giving a partial refund on [their] shopping total.”
One of the challenges the brothers faced was making the app accessible to both iOS and Android users. According to Dylan, they want the app to be downloaded by everyone in their local neighborhood. Although their app hasn’t been released yet, customers and volunteers can sign up on their website, GroceryBuddies.ml. They will continue to work on a second version of the app, which will include a community chat feature and a direct payment section. According to Dylan, they are not planning on patenting their app so others can improve and distribute the software.
“Our main goal is to provide a collaborative but safe environment that benefits local communities during the pandemic,” Winston said.
As a reward for their accomplishment, GroceryBuddies will be featured in the U.S. Capitol Building and on the House of Representatives’ website. The Iskandar brothers have also been invited to the #HouseofCode Capitol Hill Reception in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate their app to the other members of Congress. The Iskandars plan to attend this reception in-person in the late spring of 2021.
“We are a platform that focuses on connecting members of local communities while promoting family-owned businesses during this tough time,” Dylan said. “We plan to launch our app into the App Store once we test proof version two of our beta app.”
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