Digitalize — Reliable, Efficient, and Accurate Platform; Improving the Ghost Kitchen Ecosystem with Design.
Intro
In 2021, I had to work with Ghost Kitchen company; Ghost Kitchen is well known as a food prep operation with no waiters, no dining room, and no parking lot, without public presence whatsoever. In the definition, Ghost kitchens are only physical spaces for operators to create food for off-premises consumption. They focus more on an online food delivery platform; that’s why most outlets don’t serve dine-in.
When I was there, various company stakeholders asked me to design something based on their requirements. One question I had in mind at that time was, “why are they asking to create a product for each team function?”.
I tried to understand and analyze the why’s and the how of their end-to-end processes. Things I can see are they have un-spoken rules for the operations team, use multiple 3rd parties platforms, and had 1300+ canceled orders each month (out of stocks, Price difference, and wrong inputs); I list down the hypotheses where one of the hypotheses is operations team was running with offline work caused by an un-synchronized system and they wanted to improve it by digitalizing the offline process.
The Product Landscape
To validate my hypotheses and better understand the problems we want to solve, I initiated to discuss & conduct an In-depth stakeholders interview — Business, Operations (Back Office), Tech, and Product — To share their POV of the problems their facing.
My hypotheses are correct; Each function doesn't have synchronized data from each part caused of multiples platform to catch the data. These are the problems space we aim to solve:
The Problems
We want to solve: (1) Offline team function Processes (Coms and Manual work); (2) Un-synced data between team functions; (3) Performance load, Bugs, and customizable limitations.
Within these problem similarities, I conducted a co-creation session (Online discussion) in which we brainstormed our intentions, the goals we want to achieve, and how we measure them.
The Goals
We want to achieve: (1) Digitalize manual processes on the ground (Human error); (2) Create a real-time and reliable platform for all team functions; and (3) Maintain and Fully Customizable Internally.
Key Metric Indicators
- End-to-End Process Accuracy Operations and Sales (Balance).
- Material Wasted (Cancelled Orders)
- Productivity (Time Duration of team functions work).
- Partners Satisfaction (Efficient on Material wasted and sales).
- Customers Satisfaction (Time process orders).
What’s the root cause? (IDI & RCA)
While the engineering teams identified the goals and problem #3 (caused by using 3rd party app), my focus was on #1 and #2.
To deep dive the insight into the problems and goals #1 and #2, I conducted an In-depth-Interview using the Root Cause Analysis methodology with the ops team: Back Office Ops, cashier ops, and kitchen crew.
Back Office ops
Problems: (1) Campaign Performance Tracking (Sales); (2) Manual Data Report Request;(3) Unbalanced gross income platforms and ERP; and (4) Unbalanced food materials (used + wasted ≠ stock);
Needs: (1) Performance Analytics; (2) Report; (3) Balanced gross income; And (4) Balanced food materials used + wasted;
Cashier ops
Problems: (1) Prize or promos difference on products between platforms and POS; (2) Out of stock product on the Outlets; (3) Usability of Product selection and flow order input; (4) Unstable System loan and bugs during the peak hours;
Needs: (1) No difference in price or promos between platforms and POS; (2) Synced stocks with outlets; (3) Match between system flow and real-world; (4) Stability;
Kitchen ops
Problems: (1) Multiple input stock in multiple platforms; (2) Invalid Form; (3) Offline coms on peak hour with Cashier Ops — Wrong orders input, Out of stock, and canceled orders;
Needs: (1) One Source of truth Platform to access and input stock; (2) Stock Form Validities; (3) Fixed order queue.
The Challenge
How can we create eco-system design solutions that help the ghost kitchen business (Business Team, Back Office, Cashier, and Kitchen Ops) goes faster, more reliable, efficient, and more accurate?
Initiation
I initiated and conducted a co-creation session with stakeholders from each function to share and tell the story of my findings during the discovery phases with the ops team to build empathy and generate the best eco-system solutions and sustainable products for the business. The sessions were held online and more than one session, but we are having fun with it — asking why and challenging each other ideas.
Solutions
While our goal is want to digitalize every process. My findings are beneficial for the stakeholders to get visibility of what happens. We are initiating a digital ghost kitchen ecosystem that can connect every team function.
EcoSystem Design Flow
- The Kitchen Ops will have Outlet Monitoring System in the outlet to look at synchronized orders from POS and update stock inbound, prep, and wasted whenever they're open or close the outlet in one platform.
- The Cashier Ops will have Remote POS to handle 3–5 outlets simultaneously with real-time stock, price correction, promo correction, better usability design, and matching with the natural flow.
- The Business and Back Office team will have a single source of truth platform to look at the real-time data from the operations team with the Notifications, intelligent analytics (forecasting and reporting), and manage the operations need.
Design Artifact
Kitchen Display System
Point Of Sales
ERP Master Data
Some of the content is dummy text, and due to the non-disclosure agreement, I can’t share more screen or platform user flow details (KDS and ERP).
Outcomes & Learnings
Outcomes
Everyone feels happy with my initiation to conducting an end-to-end design process and co-creation because it makes us think on the same page, has the same visibility about what happens on the ground, better discussion to aim for the outcomes we want to achieve, and efficiency in developing products (7 to 3).
While my design process was enjoyable for everyone, my scope was only to deliver the results to the engineering teams to be developed, so I don’t have any visibility of the metric numbers. Hopefully, it will help the business to achieve its goals.
Learnings
One of the biggest challenges I faced in these cases was a lack of visibility about what happens on the ground. Most stakeholders don’t have the same visibility about its intention, the outcomes they want to achieve, and how to connect it.
I’ve learned that many people are trapped in creating something based on the small goals and forget to answer what are the company or user's outcomes to be achieved and how to make the product sustainable. My end-to-end design process and co-creation help and enables us to break these challenges.
Despite that, these processes take a longer time to be executed (2 Quarters, and we prioritize needs and timeline for the development) caused of we need to connect our intentions with goals and validate the problems first before we execute. But this process helps us to create sustainable products.
Fitra — (Kalo mau jadi UX/Product Designer tapi ga punya portfolio bisa berkarir gak? -Ga punya skill pun bisa kok. *asal punya orang dalem. Hehe)
