Portree High School make shortlist of ‘Dragons Den’-style competition with food app

The girls ‘Delicious Dishes’ app was chosen for the final 32 shortlist from 28,000 applicants and came close to winning – Photo credit: Willie Urquhart.

Three pupils from Portree High School travelled to London last week to take part in the final of a Dragons’ Den-style competition.

S4 students Kinsey Woods, Leia Croy and Rachel Henderson visited the UK capital on Tuesday 18th June to take part as finalists in the Apps for Good Awards 2019.

The annual awards recognise top students from across the UK, with the remit of the teams involved being to “build and submit mobile apps, IoT devices, and machine learning to solve a problem that matters to them”.

The girls ‘Delicious Dishes’ app was chosen for the final 32 shortlist from 28,000 applicants and came close to winning – with the judges now keen to see the app further developed.

Inspired by environmental concerns, the Portree High students ‘Delicious Dishes’ app seeks to reduce household food waste by providing tools such as recipes, a meal plan option and personal food profiles to transform potential waste items into tasty and nutritious meals.

The app, which is currently in the prototype stage, states that at present households in the UK are throwing away £12 billion worth of food each year.

Speaking to the Free Press ahead of their trip to London for the awards, the girls commented: “We were entered through our computing class and a few of us came up with ideas for the competition. We wanted to help people and the environment and help to stop climate change.

“The stuff people have in their house, they can put that into the app, and it shows them the recipes they can make with the ingredients they have.”

Portree High mathematics teacher Kirsty Yoxon, who worked with the girls on the project and travelled to London with them, said: “The dragons were impressed and said the girls did so well and were close to winning. I’m very impressed with the girls and they transformed into strong, confident independent public speakers.”

Prior to the competition, Portree-based company Sitekit contacted the school to express an interested in developing the app.

Discussing the next step, Ms Yoxon said: “I will be in contact with Sitekit about how we can move forward with the development. The girls have had great feedback and have some new ideas for it, so they are excited and very proud!

Article by Adam Gordon