How would you build a product for a tablet launched in restaurants?
Google- Pankaj Jain
Clarifying questions :
- Who are we? Are we a startup or a bigger company like Google, amazon who are building this? – Assuming startup
- Are we focussing on a particular Geography ? – Let’s say we are targeting Indian Metro cities to start with
- When you say a tablet in restaurants , you mean customers can view menus, and order food items without dependency on a hotel staff and we would need to build an app that would facilitate this? Yes
- The tablet is hooked up to each table allowing customers to order from there – Yes
- What is the Goal of this product? Assuming faster orders, Fewer dependencies on hotel staff, and Improving customer satisfaction – Yes
- Do we have any constraints on timelines and resources – Assuming 1 year
The goal of the product:
Since we are building this from 0 to 1 , the first goal would be user acquisition and engagement. And the product should help us to improve user satisfaction w.r.t orders
Next let’s look at some user groups involved
User Groups:
- Hotel customers – Who visit hotels and order food to eat, drink, etc
- Hotel Staff – Who take, track and manage orders
- Admins – Who are responsible for menus, hotel administration in general
I would like to go ahead with Customers who represent the largest group.
User Journey/Pain points :
- Too many items on the menu. Not able to decide what to order
- Would like to know the most ordered items, Favourite dish to make a better choice
- Ability to add items to cart and place order
- How long an order takes for a particular dish? Order tracking
- Ability to provide reviews, comments
- Ability to share experiences with friends etc
- Make payments using a tablet directly
- Customer Loyalty
I would like to provide product ideas/solutions to each of these pain points and then prioritize them based on Impact to User and Efforts
Solutions/Product Ideas
| Use Case | Product Idea | Impact to user | Efforts | Priority |
| 1) | Provide a grouping of menu items based on Category like Seasonal Foods, Starters, Continental, Desserts etc. And under each category, you could have sub categories.. Helps to navigate the menus easier and make choices | High | Low | P1 |
| 2) | A AI/ML based Alogorithm which provides recommendations to user based on a Form which user fills. The user could start by answering couple of questions on his/her favorite food and the app provides recommendations based on ratings and reviews for a dish in that restaurant. The AI/ML also could also look at the historical orders from the same user and suggest dishes or most frequently ordered dish by the user in the past which user may again tend to order | High | High | P2 |
| 3) | The user could add items to cart and place orders in one/multiple gos just like a shopping experience | High | Low | P1 |
| 4) | Live order tracking from pacing an order, Order preparation, completion and serving to table. There could be an ETA for each item in a order | High | Low | P1 |
| 5) | Ability to provide reviews, comments post ordering in the app | Med | Low | P1 |
| 6) | Provide a mechanism to connect with friends in a hybrid environment where Customers in Hotel can have lunch together via a video call with their families and friends at home. A hybrid environment to enjoy and share lunch experience | Med | High | P3 |
| 7) | Payment via payment gateway integration like Gpay, UPI, Paytm etc | High | Med | P2 |
| 8) | Customer Loyalty points where if a customer orders say more than 3000 Rs , gets credit points which can be availed as discounts in next visit. | High | High | P3 |
I would like to prioritze 1) 3) 4) 5) and 7) to start with as these are some key features required to attain our goal .
AI/ML to provide recommendations, Virtual Lunch via video (need integration with Video platforms like Zoom, Google Meet etc), and Loyalty program could be complex to start with and are discarded from the MVP stage
Metrics to measure success
- The average number of orders per user
- Average order value (transactional) per user
- I would like to measure the time from placing an order to order completion using this method VS the traditional approach of ordering food items manually via staff/waiter
- Number of repeat visits of customers in a year
- Number of reviews and comments carried out from the tablet