Design a product to speed up the cooking process?

A product to speed up cooking process -

I would like to clarify a few doubts -

1. Who are we? - We are IT company and are planning to launch products to digitise hospitalisation and food industry. This is one product in out portfolio.

2. Whhat is our goal? - Our goal is to acquire new customers by showing them value add and eventually reduce cooking time.

3. Is there any competitor in market right now?  - No

4. Cooking time definition is not very clear - Let us define it along the process.

5. We are talking of dine in or online orders? - your wish

Now is the time to see the places where we can use the product -

1. At home - Food cooking frequency ~3 times a day and the cooks are the morthers and sisters of family and maids. Number of person to eat are 4-12 and the menu completely (to a large extent) depends on mothers of the family.

2. Road side restaurants  (having a foootfall of 70-100 in a day on average) - Food is cooked by some chefs (who are not very known), tools and technologies are not very advanced, menu served is generally local cousine. Customers visiting such restaurants are cautious about quality and taste and are not very loyal as there is no dearthe of roadside restaurants these days.

 

3. Big restaurants (having footfall of 800-1000 in a day on average). Food is cooked by known chefs and number of helpers are also there. Tools and technologies are very advanced. They serve large variety of cousine options. These places generally host big parties - Marriage, Business events etc and the order at these places is pre-decided.

 

I feel - Small roadside restaurants are the correct target for this product. Because - big restaurants have many chefs and pre-ordered menu and Buffets for major fraction of customers. Moreover, customers of this big restaurants are not there to just eat. They are there to spend time with family/colleague or others. Hence, saving time there is not big deal.

And at home - food is cooked depending on what is available and how long it will take. Preperations start early. and there is predecided time (98% of times) when food is served.

Disclaimer - In roadside restaurants - I dont include - Pizzahut/McD/Dominos. They already have predefined chain of tasks and dedicated people to handle every step. They have very limited menu.

 

Now its time to look at the users of small restaurant -

1. Customer

2. Waiter

3. Cooks

4. Admin/Cashier

Cooking time - Time from giving an order to waiter to time when order is served on table.

Pain points -

Customer -

1. Cooking time seems a lot after ordering (as hunger is inflated after knowing what I will eat)

2. No visibility on status of order

3. Addition in the order is like starting from zero

4. Food is cold till it reached table

5. Not all items are served together

Waiters -

1. Time is taken in sending the order to the cook (as there are many tables and customers keep on pinging)

2. No idea what is the order status for any table, hence - cant tell customer

3. Manual tracking of all the orders, which creates problem when all the order is not given at once

4. Confusion in serving multiple tables

Cooks -

1. Delay in getting the order from customers to Cooks

2. Delay in taking food to customer's table- food is not served hot

3. Constant poking on the order status

4. Less prep for incremental orders

5. Multiple orders at once leading to confution

6. Because of multitasking, chefs tend to forget one thing or other leading to direct impact on quality and taste.

Cashier -

1. Billing errors because of mannual record for orders

 

In all, I think the major pain - points revolve around the cooking time - having Waiters and Chefs as major players.

I will prioritize the painpoint for Chefs, and some for waiters, which all will be reducing the cooking time.

 

The final state looks like - An app that helps reduces the cooking time (cokoking time is defined already)

 

We are talking of reducing time, hence I cant create any application where any of the stakeholder spends time in entering dishes, amount, specification blah blah.. Hence I will create a interaction based app - like alexa/Siri

 

Solution -

1. Order on app - For waiters to order from voice commands

2. Cook with me - For chefs to give instructions based on incoming orders, already WIP dishes

3. Quantity suggestor - Command based feature that gets invoked when Chef needs help in understanding the quantity or any other cooking related help

4. New order - Help me - Command based feature for chefs to add comething in between already WIP dishes.

5. **Prediction based on trends - An intelligent AI/ML based feature that will help Chefs to predict f there is some trend in day/s orders basis seasonality or trend, and helps Chefs to pre-cook some of the part of dishes - predicting the surge.

 

Prioritization -

I will prioritize based on Impact vs cost. As (almost) all the features are AI/ML based, I will take them one by one and will start wih something which I have most confidence on.

Internet has recipe of all the dishes and it knows time taken in all the steps.

Hence, my prioritisation will be solution #1, #2 - Solution 1 will be required minimum for any other solution to work.

Solution number 2 will instruct chefs and waiters basis next set of instructions once order added.

It will be gen- AI based interactive solution, which will be like a human interacting with everyone and giving them instructions, managinng everything.

As a delighter, it can do announcements on small achievements - like table #4 got its order in 3 minutes - and a clap sound.

And others to motivate everyone and highlight improvements.

 

Success metrics -

North star metric - % decrease in cooking time per order per person.

 

Kindly share your suggestions and feedback!!!

A product to speed up cooking process -

I would like to clarify a few doubts -

1. Who are we? - We are IT company and are planning to launch products to digitise hospitalisation and food industry. This is one product in out portfolio.

2. Whhat is our goal? - Our goal is to acquire new customers by showing them value add and eventually reduce cooking time.

3. Is there any competitor in market right now?  - No

4. Cooking time definition is not very clear - Let us define it along the process.

5. We are talking of dine in or online orders? - your wish

Now is the time to see the places where we can use the product -

1. At home - Food cooking frequency ~3 times a day and the cooks are the morthers and sisters of family and maids. Number of person to eat are 4-12 and the menu completely (to a large extent) depends on mothers of the family.

2. Road side restaurants  (having a foootfall of 70-100 in a day on average) - Food is cooked by some chefs (who are not very known), tools and technologies are not very advanced, menu served is generally local cousine. Customers visiting such restaurants are cautious about quality and taste and are not very loyal as there is no dearthe of roadside restaurants these days.

 

3. Big restaurants (having footfall of 800-1000 in a day on average). Food is cooked by known chefs and number of helpers are also there. Tools and technologies are very advanced. They serve large variety of cousine options. These places generally host big parties - Marriage, Business events etc and the order at these places is pre-decided.

 

I feel - Small roadside restaurants are the correct target for this product. Because - big restaurants have many chefs and pre-ordered menu and Buffets for major fraction of customers. Moreover, customers of this big restaurants are not there to just eat. They are there to spend time with family/colleague or others. Hence, saving time there is not big deal.

And at home - food is cooked depending on what is available and how long it will take. Preperations start early. and there is predecided time (98% of times) when food is served.

Disclaimer - In roadside restaurants - I dont include - Pizzahut/McD/Dominos. They already have predefined chain of tasks and dedicated people to handle every step. They have very limited menu.

 

Now its time to look at the users of small restaurant -

1. Customer

2. Waiter

3. Cooks

4. Admin/Cashier

Cooking time - Time from giving an order to waiter to time when order is served on table.

Pain points -

Customer -

1. Cooking time seems a lot after ordering (as hunger is inflated after knowing what I will eat)

2. No visibility on status of order

3. Addition in the order is like starting from zero

4. Food is cold till it reached table

5. Not all items are served together

Waiters -

1. Time is taken in sending the order to the cook (as there are many tables and customers keep on pinging)

2. No idea what is the order status for any table, hence - cant tell customer

3. Manual tracking of all the orders, which creates problem when all the order is not given at once

4. Confusion in serving multiple tables

Cooks -

1. Delay in getting the order from customers to Cooks

2. Delay in taking food to customer's table- food is not served hot

3. Constant poking on the order status

4. Less prep for incremental orders

5. Multiple orders at once leading to confution

6. Because of multitasking, chefs tend to forget one thing or other leading to direct impact on quality and taste.

Cashier -

1. Billing errors because of mannual record for orders

 

In all, I think the major pain - points revolve around the cooking time - having Waiters and Chefs as major players.

I will prioritize the painpoint for Chefs, and some for waiters, which all will be reducing the cooking time.

 

The final state looks like - An app that helps reduces the cooking time (cokoking time is defined already)

 

We are talking of reducing time, hence I cant create any application where any of the stakeholder spends time in entering dishes, amount, specification blah blah.. Hence I will create a interaction based app - like alexa/Siri

 

Solution -

1. Order on app - For waiters to order from voice commands

2. Cook with me - For chefs to give instructions based on incoming orders, already WIP dishes

3. Quantity suggestor - Command based feature that gets invoked when Chef needs help in understanding the quantity or any other cooking related help

4. New order - Help me - Command based feature for chefs to add comething in between already WIP dishes.

5. **Prediction based on trends - An intelligent AI/ML based feature that will help Chefs to predict f there is some trend in day/s orders basis seasonality or trend, and helps Chefs to pre-cook some of the part of dishes - predicting the surge.

 

Prioritization -

I will prioritize based on Impact vs cost. As (almost) all the features are AI/ML based, I will take them one by one and will start wih something which I have most confidence on.

Internet has recipe of all the dishes and it knows time taken in all the steps.

Hence, my prioritisation will be solution #1, #2 - Solution 1 will be required minimum for any other solution to work.

Solution number 2 will instruct chefs and waiters basis next set of instructions once order added.

It will be gen- AI based interactive solution, which will be like a human interacting with everyone and giving them instructions, managinng everything.

As a delighter, it can do announcements on small achievements - like table #4 got its order in 3 minutes - and a clap sound.

And others to motivate everyone and highlight improvements.

 

Success metrics -

North star metric - % decrease in cooking time per order per person.

 

Suggestions and feedback please