Bringing the Picnic to You — Picnic Delivery Service Case Study
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Problem Overview
The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on what we can do in public spaces, especially dining out. “Social distancing” has been a particularly difficult pill to swallow, as many restaurants simply cannot operate as they once did.
While some restaurants can make do with delivery and takeout options, there are drawbacks to eating these meals at home. The experience of the dining room, the ambiance, the service, the cutlery, the menu, and the plating all make dining out special. When that same food is unceremoniously thrown in plastic containers, the magic is gone. How can designers reintroduce that magic to this experience? Working with the limitations of takeout or delivery, what new value can we bring to dining in?
Our Solution: An environmentally friendly picnic delivery service that is able to deliver anywhere — even a city park — with GPS location services.
Project Summary
Our team created a restaurant that provides picnic delivery services to make a day outside during COVID-19 fun and stress-free. Picnic baskets are delivered to customers at any outdoor location throughout Philadelphia. This service provides an app where customers can order their baskets, choose their park, and have one of our employees directly deliver the meals based on GPS tracking. With a fleet of cargo bikes, our deliverers drop off and pick up the baskets and all of the reusable materials.
Research
Struggling Parents
An estimated 75% of mothers and 90% of fathers work in the United States. With the closing of schools, over 50 million children are now learning from home — adding another complication to parental life. The stress of parents has increased as their routines are disrupted, leaving them responsible to homeschool their children, provide all of their children’s meals and entertainment, and many other tasks on top of their regular jobs.
Extensive Screen Time
Due to the pandemic, kids are now spending 66% more time on screens, with 49% using screens for 6 or more hours a day — a 500% increase from last year. The extending screen time can lead to overstimulation, resulting in worsening moods, high levels of anxiety and irritability, and restless behavior. Increased screen time also contributes to a worsening diet as children eat more, make poorer food choices, and get less exercise. All of this data points towards the benefit of getting children outside and active. To prevent children from developing any of these effects of extensive screen time, there need to be solutions for getting children off the screen and outside.
Similar Companies
Some restaurants have “Picnic Perfect Meals,” but they have the customer pick it up and bring it to their own location themselves. Miss Ollie’s, in California, has a variety of suggestions to create a great picnic meal. In NYC some restaurants offer outdoor picnic kits available for pick-up like Blue Smoke and Aquavit. The Picnic Collective is a picnic booking company. They offer two basket sets that can be customized and upgraded. Customers are given 1.5 hours to picnic, and staff members will both set everything up and clean up the trash.
Location & Delivery Services
Restaurants are now implementing a variety of GPS location services and remote location delivery. Domino’s has over 150,000 designated delivery “hot spots” for outdoor locations where customers can pick up orders. Alternative GPS systems like FieldLogix Software monitors traffic status and tracks the drivers speed to create safer, more efficient routes. For remote locations without addresses, delivery systems like the Burrito Bomber deliver based on triangulated geolocation.
Considering the high probability of off-road delivery, our team looked into alternative transportation. We theorized that cargo bikes would be one of our best options. SoulRiders, a community cycling organization in Glasgow, Scotland, uses e-cargo bikes for last-mile deliveries. This bike fleet is revolutionary in delivering to vulnerable and isolated parts of the community. Black and Moblie is a Philadelphia based delivery service that delivers from local Black-owned restaurants. Bikers are able to mark off the areas in which they feel comfortable riding and make deliveries in those areas.
Expert Interview
Our team conducted an interview with Attayah Milton to discuss her home life during COVID-19 as a working mother. She describes home-life with her children as rather difficult during this time, as she must balance work life and provide three meals a day with her children home 24/7. She states that the school offers meal packages, but this becomes boring very quickly. Milton wants her children to have options and a quick but fun solution to providing meals. Therefore, she created snack bins and occasionally had picnics or grab to-go-meals. However, Milton desired another solution to providing fun meals without having the stress of finding what to cook.
User Personas
The following user personas were created to define the identities of who will be using our services. Sarah Andrews is a possible customer struggling to provide fun meals for her kids and John Anderson is a possible delivery driver seeking a job as a college student. We chose to create these personas to develop an identity not only for the consumers, but for who we would hire as our employees.
Team Branding
Brainstorming
For brainstorming the business names and content creation, we explored various directions and characteristics that the delivery service can relate too. When building these mind maps, we generated ideas relating mainly to picnics, but also additional identities of the company, such as cargo bike transportation, GPS tracking, and games.
Our Deliverables
For our final deliverables, we chose to design an app (our brand’s online presence) which includes a digital menu system, various packaging such as carrying vessels, takeout containers, and labels along with other minor deliverables like business cards, postcards, posters, and delivery vehicles. To start, the most important deliverable for our project was an online presence. The app and digital menu are an important part of our brand’s strategy because they are the key to solving the issues of boring COVID-Life. For our app, we decided to include the digital menu to establish our brand’s ordering system.
In addition to the app, we also decided to design various packaging. Since we offer picnic baskets with different food items, we want to create designs for our picnic baskets along with the food containers that carry the food items. An eye-catching packaging will catch the attention of our customers and be a good feature in their picnic photos, creating a playful and family-friendly feeling for our brand.
Other deliverables that we want to pursue are business cards, postcards, posters, and delivery vehicles. Business cards, postcards, and posters are helpful elements when it comes to advertising for our brand and establishing our brand’s identity, The delivery vehicles is a big role in our brand because we are heading into a safe and clean way of delivering food.
App Contents
After cart sorting, our team was able to develop the site map and wireframe for the app.
Individual Work
Vy Le
I wanted my brand to attract both the adults buying the products and the kids. I chose a font to create a rustic feeling to the brand and I also picked red, cream, and brown as my main brand colors to form a more “picnic” feeling design for the brand. Moreover, I intended to create a brand mascot to create a kid-feeling image. The design elements that I chose to have throughout my brand resemble a cheerful and playful concept.
Breanna Kerr
In addition to designing my brand based off of picnic delivery services, I created King of Clubs to focus on another fun asset we deliver with our picnic meals: Games! My logo was inspired by illustrations in a deck of cards and my menu includes sandwiches as the main course. In combining these two essential identities, King of Clubs was created. I have further branded all of the assets of my service to feel fun and family friendly!
Check out King of Clubs on my Behance: @breanna_kerr https://www.behance.net/gallery/109316419/Restaurant-Identity-Project
Likyoung Kim
I made a design by using the Cargo Bike to deliver the picnic basket quickly. My brand name is also the word that combines Quick + Picnic. To make a warm picnic, the overall feeling using yellow, red, brown, and cream color. It is my brand concept that has a simple and warm atmosphere.
Val Brodnyan
I wanted my brand to really push the idea of our GPS based outside delivery and targeted Bindlestiff towards adults enjoying the outdoors. Bindlestiff’s branding focuses around nature and exploration and keeps a cool green color scheme. The design includes illustrative elements of hiking and travel, and reaches out to any vagabond in need of a good meal.
Credits:
Project Manager and Designer: Vy Le
Production Manager and Designer: Breanna Kerr
Presenter and Designer: Val Brodnyan
Research/Creative Lead & Designer: Likyoung Kim
Professor: Bryan Satalino, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
