FOOD WRAPS PROJECT
Process Innovation | Customer experience
September'13 - April' 14 | Team Instillmotion
How might we design a standardized and efficient process for cooking food wraps
and design the customer experience for the dine in space ?
Background
Faasos is an Indian "food on demand" company that was incorporated in 2011.
They operate in the 16 largest cities in India and takes customer orders in-store, online and via its mobile app. It is the only vertically integrated food business in India and operates all three stages of a "food on demand" business: ordering, distribution and order fulfillment.
Scope of the project
Faasos had future plans to scale up and expand within non-metro cities within coming years. Systemized and efficient process and consistency were key required factors as a part of the process for realization of the plans. Also in terms of building and promoting trust in the brand, in store customer experience became very important element.
Scope was about identifying areas of intervention in the Process efficiency and operations of cooking food wraps and improved Customer Experience. Also design of system of concepts to cater to areas like role-specific, equipment, accessibility and space planning, etc. related touch-points of the process.
Research and insight finding : Understanding the people, setup, context
The research began in two main phases as 1. On field in depth research and 2. experimentation. We visited their different stores and central kitchens in Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune (HQ), in order to understand the existing back-end and front-end processes and functions. Also did a customer research to understand their target customer and the brand image and trust in mind at present.
Experimentation
On-Field research :
Here are a few photos from the field research in cities Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune.
Solution : A semi-automated process with new and revised design changes
After a few rounds of analysis of findings in field research,experiments and testing of sacrificial concepts, we came up with a semi-automated process. We tried to identify the loops and gaps in the steps of the previous process and worked on main crucial touch-points that were causing inconsistency,time delays and human skill dependency. As it was not an feasible option to go for a complete automated process, we came up with a system of simple and doable solutions to achieve the goal of time efficient and consistent process. With the proposed process the time taken for one wrap was reduced than the previous one.
Paratha maker is one of the product we designed, that helped significantly in time reduction of cooking paratha (base). This is a basic dosa tawa (flat griddle) which has two sear attachments and with temperature settings in it. We went through many trials and testings, experiments on temperature, oil quantity, cooking time to reach a stage of perfectly cooked paratha.
The cooking time was reduced from 45 sec to 25 sec. Also as this paratha maker has space for cooking two parathas at a time, which will be helpful during peak hours and bulk order scenarios.
Egg toaster is one another product we designed, that cooks soft egg omelette within 20 sec. For the wraps those have eggs in them, egg was cooked on the paratha surface, both were cooked at a time on tawa; this was causing inconsistency and time delay to some extent.
So the egg toaster cooks the egg simultaneously. This is a waffle maker modified with the temperature settings and the griddle shape suitable for cooking egg in it.
As portion control is one of the key element, we tried to incorporate to through simple designs like portion sized filling cups, nozzle attachments of condiment dispensers (for standard qty), oil sprayer and so on. With this, portion of each element that goes in one wrap is systemized and reduces dependency of human skill and hence leads to consistency in taste and perception.
Project Pilot : New Store in J P Nagar, Bangalore
While working on designing the customer experience in the store, we tried to understand how 'Faaso's' is perceived by customers.
Faaso's, as a brand has quirky, fun, young nature. So we came up the theme with for the customer dine-in area as 'Street-side'.
Fun and easy going setup for a quick and easy-bite food. We collaborated with different agencies like architects, graphic printing agency, equipment manufacturers (vendors), etc.
The cash/order counter acts as a partition between dine area and kitchen. Customer can partially see through when his order is being prepared.
Quirky and casual sitting setup in dine-in area. Steps with fun graphic and street lamps behind to give street-side feel in the space.
New proposed workflow with redesigned refrigerator, bainmarie, organized storage and access.
In the dine-in space, one side has steps and the other side has set of stools and tables for individual customers.
Copyrights as per agreement between Instillmotion Consulting Pvt. Ltd and Faaso's wraps
*Icons used in the new process graphic are taken from thenounproject
*Credits for Icons : ‘Kitchen’ by Creative stall, ‘Pancake’(used for paratha) by Nicolas Vicent, “Packet” by Tomas Knopp, “Restaurant’ by Xela Ub, ”Refrigerator” by Joby Varghese,
“Cupcakepan”(Used for filling cup tray, bainmarie) by Yazmin Alanis, “Oil sprayer” by Dmitry Mirolyubov, "Dosa" (Used for wrap ready for service) by Dgnies
Present Project Status
Currently the whole concept is being tested in two stores in Bangalore(India); also it is being tested in a store in Ahmadabad(India).