About

Why we built this

We're both born New Yorkers. We built this because food insecurity doesn't have a face — it's a neighbor, a coworker, someone's grandmother, someone's kid, and it moves through this city quietly. We've been there.

Every food resource map in New York tells you where something is. None of them tell you whether you can actually get there. Rafy has a mobility disability, and "can I get there?" isn't a design question for him — it's the one he asks before leaving the house. That's why the accessibility layer isn't a feature here. It's the whole product.

If you use a wheelchair or a walker, or you're pushing a stroller, the address is the easy part. The elevator at the station that serves it is the hard part.

Built by Rafy Cabrera and Chris Franqui.

The problem

About 22% of New York City residents experienced food insecurity in the past year, per the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker's 2024 Annual Survey of Housing and Economic Security (published 2025) [1]. The rate reaches 22.6% in the Bronx — roughly 320,000 Bronx residents — per Feeding America's Map the Meals Gap for calendar year 2023, released 2025 [2].

As of 2026, roughly 160 of the NYC Subway's ~472 stations — about 34% — are ADA-accessible [3]. Sixty-six percent are not. The MTA's 2025–2029 Capital Plan commits $7.1B to bring another 60 stations to ADA compliance, with a systemwide 95% target for 2055 [4].

The gap this app addresses sits between those two numbers: knowing a meal site exists, and knowing whether a caregiver using a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, or traveling with an older parent can actually get to it. A site directory that shows only address and hours cannot answer the second question. This build joins the USDA meal-site list with MTA elevator status and step-free entrance records so the accessibility of the trip is rendered alongside the meal.

Data sources and credits

Thanks to NYC Open Data and the New York State open data program for making the underlying feeds queryable, and to the New York Public Library and Major League Hacking for hosting the hackathon.

Honest limitations

• Accessibility is agency-reported or phone-verified, not continuously monitored. The step-free entrance status of a meal site comes from either the operating agency or a call our team made on a specific date; conditions in the field may have changed since. Every accessibility claim in the app renders with its source and the date it was verified — treat those dates as authoritative, not the badge itself.
• Hours change without notice. The USDA feed is updated periodically but is not real-time; sites close, add days, or move without appearing in the feed. Call before you go.
• Elevator status reflects an inventory refresh, not a real-time feed. The MTA elevator dataset (94fv-bak7) updates roughly daily. Same-day outages may not be reflected. If a station's ADA path is critical to your trip, verify on the MTA's live elevator/escalator status page before travel.
• We cannot verify ingredients or allergens. If your query mentions an allergy, the app displays a warning telling you to call the site. The app will never assert that any site is allergen-safe.
• A verdict is a best estimate at the shown date, not a guarantee. The green/amber/red state is computed from the data we have; missing data always resolves to amber, never green. The LLM search parser reads your question only — it never invents, generates, or returns site data.
• Source staleness we know about: the USDA 2026 site list is labeled "Testing" by USDA and may not reflect the finalized season roster. The MTA asset inventory is the freshest structured source we found for elevator status without an API key, but it is not the realtime GTFS-RT elevator feed.