Powering Gourmet & guilt free delivery experience online
On what I wish Swiggy/Zomato did significantly better for money left on the table
I am married to a Bengali. As a result of that, there’s a lot of mind over food at home and a lot of debate on topics which mostly ends in building better products.
My husband often jokes that I should be a “PM at his company”, something he has been persuading me for years. From these conversations, I often productize my thinking and make “page views”, just like this one :)
So, back to food : I turned vegan overnight one Friday on Aug 2021 and getting food delivered at home has so many nuances on the “preference set” that my husband and I had a great product conversation on this occasion. We have had our share of dripping oil, partial/complete loss of texture, us wanting two different kind of food groups (expecting an Amazon prime like experience, but feeling shortchanged to settle in lowest common denominator of ordering-in) and of-course the regret of doing it differently next time with by swapping it with dine-in, instead.
While I don’t have quantitative numbers for the two persona’s in this post I will touch on why I feel these are deeply underserved in current delivery experience.
My selfish interest ? This post is what I wished the delivery apps of today(Zomato & Swiggy) did better. A reading leader in the ecosystem may see it from a customer centric lens, just like my calendar post inspired a few great conversations with builders in that space.
First, some background
A product(suite) needs to preserve its vitality, relevance and the impressions of past, while ensuing its rejuvenation. All products that were once deeply loved, even brought delight cease to do as the consumer gets used to what is now table-stakes. This happens because of two primary reasons
Competitive landscape and a new baseline for value exchange <> money
Emerging Consumer expectations which stretches the previously lower threshold acceptance set, demanding better SLA’s, service, variety.
More the product fits in existing mental models, the lesser it creates the positive experiences that drives core human behaviour, the feeling of serendipity, joy, discovery - thus commoditising an “online experience”
Gourmet food & what the food delivery market got wrong.
But, first the gaps in the current product
Gourmet food is all about experience and evoking one of many : serendipity, discovery & celebration. Often, because delivery is commoditised - so is the “anticipated experience of sensulization” of the meal which is partially lost in the process. This doesn’t build a long term positive reinforcement to replicate that experience or to tap into intrinsic habit loop of ordering again, almost effortlessly.
Texture preservation, food presentation & including multiple senses is a major part of gourmet - most of which becomes difficult to “deliver” . This makes the propensity to walk in to the gourmet food outlet a lot more likely for subsequent visits to be able to capture value<> money (“Regret hypothesis”)
Bad Gourmet food delivery trains consumer behavior to avoid / prefer only a certain kind of food groups that may be insensitive to the “delivery” constraints. This then negates the consecutive orders while short-circuiting the emotional lens to ordering & forcing a more quantitive lens of perceived benefits (”What’s the point when the food arrives soggy, let’s skip ordering in today, and walk in the week after)
Currently the product packaging has thoughtful design on outer bags and often bespoke bamboo/sustainable packaging (where-ever applicable). Even printed, but handwritten looking “Thank you” notes have made way in this experience. Problem is that they capture the most unsexy part of the lifecycle of food, before the gets to the table. Think of this as do you really want to read the letter, when you are doing chinaware to serve the food and making a run for the scissors to cut the tape from the delivery boxes ?
Tony Fadell who was the SVP at the iPod division at Apple Inc quotes this best with the experience of removing a sticker from apple that was meant to bring traceability into the origination of an apple, and how it commoditises an experience to the point the users loose the pain of removing the sticker , but also loosing a key delight touchpoint alongside.
You may be busy “finding a scissor” & “cutting the circular tape”, the dripping oil, the soup leaking at the sides - in that the delivery is just an exchange for time & connivence, a deterrent to create an experience to cherish.
Where is the “third place” in all of this, really ?
Howard Schultz(CEO, Starbucks), after deriving many of the core values for what Starbucks stands for, famously set the vision of making their stores the “third place”.
“We want our stores to be the third place, a warm and welcoming environment where customers can gather and connect. Any customer is welcome to use Starbucks spaces, including our restrooms, cafes and patios, regardless of whether they make a purchase.”
In a busy, fragmented and an ever lonely world, food sets that anchor point to slow down, catch a breath, shrug off a bad week at work and that there is just so much to do. It helps foster the sense of belonging, grounded-ness & community connection, and by being present, even if you know no-one dining at other tables. Community is also the secret superpower of the Blue zone phenomenon.
So, in a user’s mind this is how Gourmet is experienced with this constraints
So, how can we improve the product experience for Gourmet ordering ?
In a subsegment of user persona’s of liking the experience of Gourmet food, but not the experience / time driving in, a consumer wants the experience to punch a lot above its weight vs the price. Here are a few interventions that try to emulate part of the greens on the Gourmet dine in in table above
Building multi sensory experiences via smell, sound - much like how airports give small perfume samplers, for you to slow down as you serve the food, making it a moment.
A QR code that can go wild, really - play a pre-built song playlist according to a few themes, restaurant/food theme, even landing upto to a personalised feed that both explores and exploits. This could even journal the food preparation and introduce the consumers to new food palates via the food’s origination culture. A precursor for this hypothesis to hold true would be that people want to experience moments of connection & community during this time, and would prefer to see/hear it together.
A bold extension to this could be to simulate the nudges with the waiter supporting the order , or open AI do it “for my mood” vs “defined food categories” - I visualize this to be open search, or a mood relevance engine.
Next cousin : Guilt free, really ?
First, what is guilt free - is it low calories, low fat, high protein, a feeling of satiated without drowning in food, or eating in restricted medical conditions such as diabetes? The current product messaging seems to blend all these goals into one persona & product messaging “guilt free”, without any intelligent filters that help the app break the persona into its right subsegment, reduce decision fatigue. Guilt free is bespoke, long tail, high relevance behaviour to the food matching problem.
A simple rule of thumb I see here is, if the experience of navigation & discovery is the same from the default landing to within Guilt free, it is just narrowing the relevance set, but not targeting the persona’s core needs. Taking it two notches up would also mean, highlighting what is NOT, as guilt free symbolises replacements and why, so.
Millet base, great. More greens, Extra proteins. For the guilt free pricing vs portions, the value of what is not needs to be articulated per item.
So, who is a guilt free ++ user ?
Cares about eating healthy in general. Has values, choices, mindfulness and likes to stick to these ~95% of times. Increasingly people struggle with lifestyle related diseases and need to switch to regimes that were previously unknown and intuitive. Our wheat is now hybrid / genetically modified, bringing a host of issues that land to mis-marketed high priced “Gluten free” products.
Has goals unrelated to a preferred number range on weighing scale - some may be building up towards external goals (such as preparing for outdoors/ hiking etc) - eg: high protein diet to help manager hunger. And the “weighing scale” may just be a lagging indicator / not actively monitored
Has short/long term medical needs such as diabetes - Type1,2, or even gestational diabetes where the expectation levels from food can be entirely different.
…First the gaps in the current product
The current products are seen only from a narrow, “calorie” point of view . Beyond the articulated “Guilt free” in text, the current navigation does not evoke “desire” to eat in “guilt free manner”. Eg : on browsing rolls, there is hardly any innovation on the base and the “what” and “why” in guilt free. A great product can use these touch-points to educate, inspire and reach towards the consumer’s goals.
Guilt free consumers are a spectrum of users , with multiple dimensions, behavioural, relationship with food, “prior & evolving beliefs in what is guilt free” (eg : a certain defined targets of macro’s such as fibre / protein etc), life goals - both long & short term, or even a range of users with restrictive eating for medical conditions(eg : Diabetes)
Consumer intuitively evoke the following one/many feelings post a guilt free meal and the messaging should evoke this desire in a visual manner. According to the persona(s), a good experience needs to do one of many
The feeling of satiated, but lightness
A feeling of making the cheat meal worth it ( Mimicking the consumers rationalise their failure in delayed gratification)
Assuming a rule of thumb that if a consumer won’t choose the food while they see it in physical world(and are disgruntled on why it is being packaged as guilt free), it will be hard to simulate a repeated pattern of this in home delivery.
Currently guilt free experience is “exploiting” part of what about the consumers than “explore” mode of experimenting to introduce them to new pallets, life choices and belief systems
All of this puts a lot of drain in selection of food, much like window shopping for someone who’s picky about their style or expends a lot of energy in selection & looses emotional energy in the decision making choosing to forgo making the decision completely.
Improving the product experience in Guilt free
Creating a blue zone phenomenon in a food selection experience by evoking feeling of wellness, value system, but most importantly a sense of progression
Build the product around consumer needs, not around categories, even if these were broken into more exotic food groups/cuisine style such as greens / micro-greens / salats, mediterranean. A good way to visualize is a reflection of goals & mood - just like at a subway counter - where you pick and add things in your sub - depending on your goals and personalise the long tail food experiences and value<>money exchange rationally adds up
Creating pre-built thematic categories around these needs from the existing inferred needs - High protein, Diabetic friendly, Millet based, Greens mania, Baked not fried, Plant proteins, Gluten free, Keto friendly.. you get the point. This can be the gateway to both introducing more food groups and also reducing the decision fatigue, since the matching problem experienced in a consumer’s mind is not “sandwich”, but the goal and the food groups / micronutrients they want from this experience
Stretch goals for partners ? Cultivate a shift in how the food is produced, packaged & distributed by making it more healthier to the gut
Closing thoughts
There is a famous anecdotal narration from Indra Nooyi on how she noticed that her own executives were avoiding high sugar drinks, but fighting to preserve the product lines, imagining the consumers are a different reflection of the society. She pushed incredibly hard for what become Performance with purpose , not only stepping down the sweetness level in the product offerings, but also rejuvenating new product lines for a changing health dynamic.
A glaring 61% + of all deaths in India attributed to lifestyle or non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and Swiggy and Zomato while being “marketplace aggregators” have this unique vantage point to do a breakthrough for the changing dietary needs on our society, together with the food partners - put the fighting shoes on !!
As it goes in US navy Seals, “We don't rise to the level of our expectations, or greatness, we fall to the lowest level of our training” - Rise and shine !!
Till next time !!