Kitchen United provides restaurant operators a turnkey way to accelerate growth and reach the off-premise diner. They offer restaurants a top-tier food production facility combined with insights and ideas on how to profitably expand into the food delivery business. For high-volume commissary businesses, KU offers commercial kitchen space, business intelligence, and resources to succeed with minimal risk and capital outlay.
In the attempt to improve their offering for existing foodies and attract new ones, there was an appetite to start with the Kiosk experience. Located in Westfield, people were not having a great experience when wanting to order food and less when trying to decide where they wanted to receive it. No clear comms to know where these kiosks are nor instructions around how to leverage their capabilities. In summary, we didn't want the consumer to get the food, rather the food get to them.
The experience KU had was restaurant based. You needed to browse restaurant after restaurant to figure out what you'll order. Instead, we wanted to create a product based experience, where you'll search for pizzas regardless of which restaurant will sell it to you.
The first product we touched was the Kiosk, also changing the format in which the screen was displayed (vertical vs horizontal)
We introduced some changes in the selector to make it clear to consumers where, how and when they'll get their food ready.
It was then time to apply the new e-commerce approach to the whole suite of products: kiosk, mobile app and web app.
1) The strategy to display/navigate a big catalog (food, convenience items, retail) on the kiosk
- We will add categorization to all the items to differentiate areas (food, convenience, retail)
- We will add further categories to these items to help users dig deeper (burgers, jeans, vegetables, etc)
- We will display these categories on the shopping screens so they are easily accesible.
2) The plan is not to duplicate what’s already in web/app. The kiosk needs to have a unique experience because is serving a different type of audience and is used in a completely different context.
The kiosk could be used by anyone from a teenager to a senior citizen. They may or may not be tech savvy, speak English, hear or see well. These can all be challenging situations to design for. To serve an overall experience, we need to:
- Use graphics and icons whenever possible to either replace or supplement text.
- Have other things to distinguish actions and elements besides just the color of something. For example, kiosk instructions should not tell a user to hit a red button or pick up a receipt from the green tray.
3) We need to include a type of login so that regular customers can repeat their order anytime. Say they put their phone number and the kiosk recognizes them. To achieve this goal, we need to:
- Include a phone number entry abd store it in the system so that the kiosk recognizes the customer.
- Include their last order as suggested order right away.
4) Users are in the location and need to order fast. Time conflicts, item availability issues can happen but we need to consider the following:
- We need to display only items that are available at the moment.
- Users will schedule their order the same way they do in web/app (order mode - time). If time conflicts ocurr, then we display the messages and allow them to make changes. All changes before getting to checkout.
5) Since we are grouping the items in categories, it will be way easier to manage the items added in cart. Someone can have food from multiple restaurants, someone else may have food and retail items. In order to serve all users in the same experience, we need to:
- Group items in cart by clearly distinguish food from retail and convenience items.
- Allow users recognize the brand they are shopping from.
- Users will manage their cart as they usually do (quantities)
We'll work together to create designs that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also performance-driven, helping your brand achieve its desired results.
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