Ticos.US - Pura Vida

Inspiration

When you become an expat, staying connected to 'home' is very important, and usually we do so via food, the one we prepare at home or when eating out.

In social media specially FB there are hundreds of posts of people looking to find the products they need to prepare food, in which stores can you buy them, can you buy online, any good costa rican restaurant recommendations?

For 'ticos' (as people from Costa Rica are known) trying to find Salsa Lizano to prepare anything from tamales to gallo pinto can be a daunting task, specially if you are not willing to pay the prices, you find at Walmart or Amazon.

Could we compile and store a 'list' of places, and even make it easier to buy online, without much hassle?

What it does

It is a website that allows Ticos to easily find costa rican food products and restaurants. Using Square's API we can onboard anybody selling using Square in the matter of seconds, and give them a global audience with local connections.

Anybody from local grocery chains to the someone that brings a few extra suitcases or a food distributor, can use this website to sell.

The end user benefits from easy product shopping, price comparison, and connection with 'tico' businesses in or near their community.

How we built it

Using Square, Java backend, and Angular for the frontend

What we learned

There is demand for 'national' products and there is a cottage industry of people that will put a few products in their suitcases to bring back to sell, and then some food distributors that are catching up to the action.