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Platepath

About Platepath

Finding food shouldn't require knowing where to look.

Food insecurity is a food problem. It is also, and more fixably, a navigation problem. Platepath is a community project working on the second part.

People sit in a circle of chairs on a lawn for an outdoor community gathering

Illustrative stock photography. Not Platepath staff, volunteers or partners.

Where the project honestly stands

Stage
Community prototype
Listings
Fictional demo data for Harbourview, a city that does not exist
Impact numbers
None yet, so none are shown
Next step
Conversations with pantry visitors, volunteers and staff

Why it exists

The resources exist. The navigation doesn't.

In most places the help is already there: food banks, pantries, community meals, produce programs, low-cost markets, student programs. What is missing is a single, current, honest way to see which of them fit a particular person's week.

Today that means several websites, phone calls one at a time, eligibility rules in a PDF, and guesswork about transit and opening hours. Usually on a phone, often while hungry.

Platepath doesn't create food. It cuts down the searching, calling and guessing that stands between someone and food that is already there.

Why should someone already worrying about food also have to become an expert in a dozen disconnected systems?

The question the project started with.
Hands chop red peppers and lettuce on a wooden board surrounded by bowls of cut vegetables

Principles

What we hold ourselves to.

  1. Dignity

    Nobody has to explain why they need food. We don't ask about income, status or circumstances, and we don't sort people into categories.

  2. Privacy by default

    No account needed. Planner answers stay on your device unless you choose to sync them. Nothing is sold, and there are no ad trackers.

  3. Honesty about data

    Posted hours are called posted hours. Estimates are called estimates. Demo listings are labelled as demo, every time.

  4. Accessible to everyone

    Built for a small phone, one hand, a keyboard or a screen reader, in bright light and with motion turned off.

  5. Plans that survive real life

    A plan has to survive a bus schedule, a closed door and a kitchen with only a kettle. If it can't, it isn't a plan.

How we work

Listen before scaling.

The order matters. The tool is downstream of what people tell us, so the next step is listening, not adding features.

What a pilot looks like

  1. Map the gapDone

    Write down what someone has to do today to find food, step by step.

  2. Build the smallest useful thingDone

    A planner that turns a few answers into a plan, on clearly labelled demo data.

  3. ListenNow

    Talk with pantry visitors, volunteers and program staff about what goes wrong and what would help.

  4. Pilot with partnersLater

    Real, verified listings in one area, kept current by the organisations that run them.

  5. RedesignLater

    Change what needs changing, including the parts we were attached to.

Photo credits

The photographs, and who took them.

Every photograph on Platepath is licensed stock, used under the Unsplash or Pexels License. They are illustrative: none shows a Platepath listing, partner, volunteer or staff member.

48 photographs, served from this site. Thank you to the photographers who share their work.

See how a plan is put together.

The matching is fixed, published and explained in plain language.

How it worksBuild My Food Plan
Food todayPlan my week