A food service for busy people who care about staying fit

Overview

An existing client of mine wanted to try a business idea. He and a partner with experience in operating kitchens had an idea of creating a membership based food delivery service aimed at busy, health-conscious people.

We discussed the vision and goals of the project and I helped them map what the ideal customer experience could be.

Trough these exercises, we were able to choose a direction for the project and I was able to wireframe some concepts to review with the founders and test with a few potential customers.

In this project, I helped the founders with:

• Product strategy
• Customer research
• Product design (UX & UI — Branding was sourced elsewhere)
• Front-end development.

I collaborated remotely with an Engineer I hired on a 2-weeks sprint cadence. He implemented the user stories of the sprint, and I presented the demos and collected stakeholder and user feedback for the next sprint.

The initial idea didn’t resonate as well as we expected

The first idea was to offer a membership based meal delivery service with multiple tiers (number of meals per day). Customers would be able to personalize their meals up to two days in advance as long as their membership was active.

This required building a native app, given the importance of having access to locations. We chose to start with iOS considering the target audience’s preference.

We tested this concept using mid-fidelity prototypes and we found that it had several issues. The main one was that customers were busy and often on the move, so that would have been too complicated both for the user and the delivery people to keep the destination for each order up-to-date.

We found opportunities to pivot when talking with potential customers

Interviewing people allowed me to uncover a few product opportunities. The most significant ones were to serve:

• Busy parents who often picked food from whatever place was nearby, have healthy meals at home ready for them and their kids
• Workspaces where employees have short lunch breaks and can’t find healthy food nearby.

These insights led us to pivot the idea into a “meal packages” model. This also helped users feel the service was more flexible and that could even be used in family settings.

Building the first version

To get to test the idea in the real world faster, we also decided to switch from a delivery service to a pick-up one. Customers would be able to pick up their ready meals from their preferred local “store”.

This also allowed us to build the product using web technology instead.

For customers, the design should support:

• Browse the menu without having to sign up.
• Quote and customize a package without having to sign up
• Offer initial meal recommendations for first time customers
• Switching suggested meals with any of others in the menu
• Check out their first package without creating an account (“Guest Checkout”)
• Create a user account automatically to make subsequent orders easier
• Track their delivered packages, save a few basic preferences and manage their payment information.

We also had to support internal users with their everyday tasks

This project also required supporting internal users.

The critical user role to support in their tasks were Kitchen operators. We focused on helping them manage deliveries, build groceries lists and plan their days based on the collected orders from customers.

The product was built and delivered, but then the COVID pandemic hit

After a few iterations, the core features of the design were approved and I started building them in code (HTML+CSS using the Bootstrap framework).

At this point, the Engineer already had seen and assessed the effort required to build the back-end and implement the designs. He was able to build a demo website in a few weeks, and we used that one to present the demos to the stakeholders.

Unfortunately, even when we delivered the functioning web app, the product didn’t launch because the COVID pandemic hit, and, despite being a good business opportunity for the founders, they had other priorities in life.

A few tests with potential customers who showed interest during early interviews gave us very positive feedback when we showed the demo to them. And considering the current competitive landscape with big players (Uber Eats, Rappi) increasing prices constantly, I think this is an experiment worth re-exploring for my clients.