5 UX Insights from the Restaurant World

Based on my experience working for Good Food Guys, which operates 10 brick-and-mortar Mixt Greens and Split Bread restaurants, I’ve put together some observations about this world in terms of user experience.

1. It is very difficult to ensure a consistent experience.

Every minute the restaurant is open is a live show, except the actors get paid way less and are way less appreciated by society than “real” actors. Every single interaction and every bit of food made throughout the day has the potential to be recorded, scrutinized, and broadcast to the world via social media or a Yelp review.

You need employees who are smart, quick on their feet, courteous, patient, and have the knife skills/cooking skills/management skills/operational skills to keep your restaurant running smoothly.

For mobile apps, SaaS, websites, etc., interactions take place mostly through an interface, not with a human. And yet, every nanosecond is extremely important to making an impression on your user.

Every single stutter, bug, misspelling, and misaligned button will be noticed over time. And you will definitely need a human touch to design, sell, and market your product, not to mention provide solid customer support to ensure your users are listened to (and feel listened to).

2. Internal structure is crucial to resilience and user satisfaction.

At restaurants, internal structure may consist of:

• store managers (who deal with hiring, training, and managing employees as well as ordering supplies, overseeing daily operations, and more)
• store employees (who are the face and muscles of your company)
• physical infrastructure (kitchen and building facilities, all of which will break down at some point)
• operational structure (recipe creation, sourcing ingredients and packaging, implementing company-wide menu/brand/marketing changes)

If you want to operate more than a couple stores, you need to start strengthening every part of your structure. That way, when there’s a power outage in downtown SF and the lights literally won’t turn on (this really happened), everyone stays calm and no customer feels ignored, left behind, or ripped off.

I’m not an expert on back-end structures at tech companies, but anything less than 99.9% uptime is likely to cause a lot of unhappiness, so a solid technical foundation is crucial. And when things go wrong (and they will), you need plans in place so your customers are taken care of no matter what. This means strong internal organization and quick, transparent responses.

This may not seem like a traditional UX issue, but to me it’s an integral part of how people experience your product. PR matters, customer support matters, and response time matters.

3. Consider your users in different real-world contexts.

Mixt Greens operates eight brick-and-mortar locations, but it also has a mobile truck product called Mixt Rover. The Rover visits several relatively isolated locations in San Francisco, and drops off pre-ordered salads at scheduled times every day.

Another offshoot of Mixt Greens is Mixt Cupboard, which is a self-service kiosk, installed in an office building and loaded up with fresh salads several times per week by a nearby physical store.

Each distribution method touches users in different ways: ordering in-store vs. online vs. not at all, paying at a register vs. online vs. on a tablet, finding trust and comfort in a long line at lunchtime vs. in a website vs. in the kiosk’s physical appearance.

When a product is purely digital, it can be harder to take different use cases and contexts into account. But it’s just as important to do so; what happens to your app’s usability when the user is using it one-handed while shopping, or hands-free while driving, or when your user has limited mobility? Or all three?

4. Numbers speak volumes, but dig deeper if you can.

We had lots of data streaming in every day, from broad numbers like revenue, profit margins, labor costs, promotion costs, and more — which could then be broken down by store location, date, time of day, menu items, and more.

This data was extremely important in making product decisions, but I also witnessed a strong sense of direction that stemmed from the co-founders’ convictions. In other words, they treated data analysis as an art, not a rigid math problem.

We also paid close attention to qualitative feedback from our customers, and took the time to ask for clarification and engage them in conversation. This helped us understand the “why” behind customer requests and complaints.

I’d say the approach should be basically identical for all products. Numbers are super helpful, but they can be misleading at times, or they may distract you from the real problems or merits of your product. Deeper user testing and research help balance this out.

5. Don’t let the haters get you down.

I’ve read every single Yelp review written for all eight Mixt Greens locations and both Split Bread locations over two years. It’s safe to say I’ve gained a huge appreciation for the restaurant industry.

No company is perfect and there will be slip-ups from time to time. And yeah, being pesticide-free means that little bugs (not the tech kind) might sneak into your greens once in a blue moon. And having to tax 8.75% on every order is a San Francisco decision, not a company one.

Every product has its faults, and no product is truly one-size-fits-all (even when it tries to be). As a designer, I try to be okay with that. Listen to the users who are actually your users. Find your north star and remember not to get disoriented.