What began as a simple personal project for Marius Genton has since evolved into an app now used by more than 4,000 Bruins every day during the academic year.

BruinDining is an app that features hours, menus and nutritional information for UCLA Housing’s dining options. Genton, a rising third-year computer science and engineering student, said the app was created to share accessible information about UCLA’s dining establishments.

Upon arrival on campus, Genton found it inconvenient to use the official UCLA websites to find dining hall hours, he said. There were multiple times when he showed up to a dining hall only to find it closed, he added.

Thus, the earliest prototype of BruinDining was born in November 2022. Genton said the app idea came to him after he first created a widget for his home screen with dining hall hours, so the information was easily accessible.

“I had it for myself for a few months, and then my friends started noticing, and they’re like, ‘Oh, how do you have that? I want that too,’” Genton said. “I figured, ‘oh, well, if my friends want it, I might as well publish it. And maybe some other people want it too.’”

With the encouragement of his friends, Genton published the app’s first edition on the App Store in January 2023, he said. At the time, it only had the widget feature with dining hall hours, he added.

“Getting started with finding users in the first place is hard,” Genton said. “That was probably the biggest setback for me – I made this app, and then no one wants it. And turns out, I just had to advertise it differently.”

Genton said he began to promote the app by putting up fliers around campus with a QR code that led to the AppStore listing. As a result, he received 30 downloads in a month, he added.

Last summer, Genton added more features to BruinDining, which he wrote in the programming language Swift and built in XCode, he said. Right before the beginning of the 2023-24 academic year, he made a post about the app on the UCLA 2026 Snapchat community story, he added.

“Just like that, I got 200 downloads in a single day the first time I posted,” he said. “I posted again a little later and got 300 more downloads. And from there, people just started talking about it between each other, and I’d get 15 users a day without doing any advertising.”

Andrew Zheng, a rising second-year computer science student, said he uses the app every day.

“It’s a lifesaver,” Zheng said. “It’s so much faster than going to the UCLA website; it’s really convenient.”

Genton has placed multiple advertisements within BruinDining for other student entrepreneurs’ apps, he said. He added that last year, he advertised Swipe Out Hunger, a student-run organization that helps Bruins donate leftover meal swipes.

“I know it’s so hard to get users, so I’m really happy to be able to provide a platform for that,” Genton said. “That’s something I’ve been trying to focus on – reaching out to people working on cool projects and offering to do that.”

Aliyah Anderson, a rising third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student and Genton’s friend, has helped propose new features for BruinDining.

“He developed (the widget), and then once he showed it to me, I was obviously in awe,” she said. “I was already suggesting stuff, like adding the menus for food trucks, and then he came up with the nutritional info.”

Genton went to each truck to collect the menus, which he then added to the database, he said. The food truck menus, ratings and reviews are a few of BruinDining’s features that cannot be found anywhere else – including the UCLA Dining website – he added.

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Another enhancement suggested by Anderson is a notification system in which app users can receive alerts when a dining hall has a certain dish. This was inspired by Genton and Anderson often missing their favorite meal, the poke at Bruin Plate, Anderson said. BruinDining now sends around 800 notifications every day, Genton added.

Genton said a new feature of BruinDining is also a swipe market, in which app users can buy and sell meal swipes from other students. Although buying or selling meal swipes is against UCLA Housing regulations, many students still trade swipes, including by advertising online.

Many app user suggestions – including the swipe market – have made it into the app, Genton said, adding that the app is most fun to work on when people are responsive.

“People are being way too nice to me,” Genton said. “They’re like, ‘Thank you so much for making this app. It’s great. It changed my life.’”

Genton has reached out to restaurants in Westwood in hopes of broadening BruinDining’s reach, Anderson added. She added that Genton is not currently making income from BruinDining.

“He’s always on it (the feedback form), looking at stuff,” Anderson said. “He really does take it to heart, and he’s looking to expand the app little by little.”