How We Helped a Foodservice Company Survive the Covid 19 Crisis Through Rapid Software Development
1. Framing the Problem
When COVID 19 arrived in Germany in March 2020, along with the first government lockdown, most catering businesses and restaurants were faced with the absolute uncertainty of their economic future. Restaurants had to close and only takeaway was possible. Our client — a full-service restaurant with 35 stores — was faced with a decision: Wait and see or act immediately? Fortunately, they decided to act immediately and open their own online store with their own delivery service.
The challenge and Sprint Goal was to set up an online store for all 35 full-service restaurants in Germany and Austria in order to compensate for financial losses in the day-to-day business caused by the lockdown and to secure the 1500 jobs.
We had the experience in setting up solid and fast online shopping systems, the necessary customer information and capacity within our team, the legal knowledge, and the will to make a difference. We decided to accept the mandate, commit to the timeframe and implement the process through a Discovery Sprint adjusted to 3 days.
2. Setting the Focus
We admit it: We had our mouth a bit full, but we made our decision based on sound judgment and found a great partner for this challenge in our client. We set the stage and gathered all information needed via different stakeholders of our client to define the most relevant Sprint questions:
- Can we set up the shop and food delivery within just three days?
- Can we prepare the delivery teams within this short timeframe?
- Can we represent the entire menu online with the chosen shop framework?
These Sprint Questions should accompany us throughout the sprint in order to maintain a continuous focus and to question our actions again and again. The long-term goal was to compensate the loss from the missing restaurant income through the online store and connected delivery service. One challenge was to be able to handle the large selection of menu combinations in a standard shop system without having to make too many development adjustments in the short time available.
3. Aligning Your Team With the Solution
After we gathered the full understanding of the processual, technical and legal problems we checked back with the client’s stakeholders and aligned the common understanding thanks to the mapped visualization. We mapped the process from order to delivery, marked out the Sprint focus and sketched the online store.
The long-term goal was clear and the main problem areas had been discovered. Now we had to combine two different areas of design in our storyboard: The step-by-step plan to set up the online shop as well as the whole delivery process.
The shop design focused on the user interface design, the product presentation, and the user experience until the order had been made. The area of the process design included of course the order, but also the offline process until the food had been delivered to the happy customers across all 35 restaurants. In parallel, all legal areas had to be covered and implemented.
4. Designing and Developing the Online Shop
Thanks to the combination of modern online shop frameworks and API-driven payment providers, we were able to implement the development of the online shop in the short time frame guaranteed.
Unlike a classic Discovery Sprint, we couldn’t create a prototype first without actual software development but had to go straight into implementation. Not, of course, without appropriate testing systems.
5. Testing the Food Delivery Experience
Three enormously productive days were coming to an end. Sleep, however, fell by the wayside. Under normal circumstances, it should always be made clear that Sprint Days take into account the energy of all team members and keep the working days short but full of energy.
The test environment was live and the first orders were run through together with our client’s team from food order to food delivery. The final testing phase provided valuable insights on how to ensure an optimal user experience and what final adjustments needed to be made. These tests made the entire sprint worthwhile: at the end of these sprint days, we knew what we had achieved and what we needed to do next to optimize the shopping experience and delivery process.
6. Launching and Selling the 1st Burger
It was a tight race but we reached our goal: after only 3 days we were able to put the store live and were ready to sell the first burger.
At this point, we don’t want to hide the fact that it then took another three days, based on our test experiences, until the actual first burger could be sold via our online store. But after that, the entire process accelerated, brought our customer into the media due to the rapid transition from a classic restaurant in the system gastronomy to a self-sufficient delivery service, and secured sales so that none of the 1,500 employees would have to be laid off or put on short-time work due to the lockdown.
7. After the Sprint Is Before the Sprint
From the sale of the first burger, our experience has allowed us to continuously learn, improve and implement adjustments. In iterative processes, we have driven the development and enabled our client to continue its online shop and delivery service independently.
If products or services have evolved after a Sprint and new challenges and issues arise, it can make a lot of sense to start a new Sprint. When this makes sense and in which cases not, you can read more about here. When you also feel like sprinting or sharing experiences, I look forward to hearing from you.
