Overview
Giant Eagle, a prominent grocery and retail chain in the midwest, sought to innovate within the meal solutions market. Despite existing offerings like meal kits and prepared foods, the company aimed to differentiate itself by leveraging its resources to compete with industry leaders, such as Blue Apron and Hello Fresh.
Background
Project Team
Dongtao Bi, Joanne Yang, Shixian X, Lily Du
Client
Giant Eagle, Inc.
Duration
6 months (2024.01 - 2024.06)
The Challenge
User-centered Problem
72% of Giant Eagle customers experience dinner-decision fatigue at least three times per week—leading to excessive food waste, and increasing reliance on last-minute restaurant takeout.
Business-centered Problem
As a retailer providing ingredients for home cooks, Giant Eagle is losing business to local restaurants and online meal delivery services; the company needs a solution tailored to its unique customer base.
The Solution
EagleKitchen simplifies meal preparation by seamlessly integrating recipe discovery with grocery fulfillment, bridging the gap between meal planning and execution.
My Responsibility
Concept Development
Planned and facilitated collaborative design sprints to ideate, define, and iterate service concepts.
Design Prototyping
Moderated usability testing sessions to gather user feedback and synthesize findings.
The Results
7/10
User Adoption Rate
Most recent testing results score indicating the proportion of customers adopting EagleKitchen.
92%
Task Completion Rate
Successful task completion rate for key functionalities during usability testing with users.
8min
Avg. Completion Time
The average time users took to plan weekly meals and add the necessary ingredients to their cart.
Serving Portion Setting
Recipe Preferences
Allergic Ingredients
Customer onboarding with personalization
EagleKitchen provides personalized onboarding that adapts to customer's household, preferences, and food allergies for improved recipe recommendation experience.
Giant Eagle Homepage
Eagle Kichen
Preference Settings
Recipe recommendations based on preferences
EagleKitchen provides convenient access to tailored recipe suggestions adapted to customer's dietary preferences with a simplified path from inspiration to dinner table.
Recipe Details
Shopping Cart
Swap Ingredients
Streamlined recipe browsing and shopping with flexibility
With EagleKitchen, customers can plan for daily meals and generate an organized shopping list—saving time and stress for deciding where to eat.
Meal Preparation Reminder
Planned Meal Recipes
Daily meal preparation reminder
With the smart notifications that nudge experiences at the perfect moment, EagleKitchen help keeping every step of meal preparation on track—even on the most hectic days.
Problem Statement
“
How might we leverage Giant Eagle’s resources to design a meal solution service that resonates with customers' needs for daily meals?
”
Design Process
Competitor Benchmarking
Giant Eagle's key differentiator lies in providing customers with fresh, curated, and affordable ingredients. The focus is on determining the most effective way to deliver this service.
Affordable, grab-and-go meal kits catering to time-strapped customers.
Premium, customizable ready-to-serve meals with high-quality ingredients.
Subscription-based meal delivery services offering convenience.
STRATEGY
Giant Eagle’s strategic market positioning
In comparison to competitors in the meal solution market, Giant Eagle occupies a distinct sector, offering the chance to deliver a differentiated service centered on curated, affordable, and high-quality meal options.
Design Sprint 2
User Research
Context
Customers weigh in several factors when deciding what to eat.
Through in-store observations and speaking to customers, we identified key factors that customers consider when planning for their daily meals, focusing on three primary areas:
Challenge
However, the current experience presents several challenges for customers.
guerilla research
The majority of the challenges stem from disorganized grocery shopping, resulting in inconsistent use of purchased ingredients.
We conducted 12 brief guerrilla interviews (15–20 minutes each) with Giant Eagle customers, representing demographics of working professionals, students, and household owners, to gain insights into their meal planning habits.
Insight
8 out of 12 interviewed customers reported wasting produces from their purchase.
Because they didn’t plan out how much they needed or how to use it across multiple meals, leading to mismatched or underutilized items at home.
Insight
Nearly all participants expressed wanting a wider variety of recipes for daily meals.
However, they felt overwhelmed learning from online sources and intimidated by adding new ingredients to their pantry.
User persona
"I want to eat better without spending hours figuring out what to make and what to buy, especially during the hectic college days."
Demographics
Name: Maya Chan
Age: 27
Occupation: College Student
Household: Lives with a roommate
Frustrations
Wastes time figuring out what to cook after long workdays
Buys ingredients that go unused or don’t match her meal plans
Finds online recipe platforms overwhelming and disconnected from grocery shopping
Pain Points
Quick, reliable meal planning that fits a busy weekday schedule
Affordable recipes that minimize waste and use ingredients on hand
Easy integration between shopping list and cooking steps
Iterated Problem Statement
“
How might Giant Eagle help students and young professionals streamline workday meal preparations through an online meal planning service?
”
design principles
who
Why target students and working professionals?
when
Why prioritize solutions for weekday meals?
how
Why deliver the service through online platform?
Design Sprint 3
Concept Development
MVP with features tailored to identified pain points
I led my team in brainstorming the primary features to prototype based on learning from user research.
Personalized meal recipe recommendations
(1) Recommendations based on customer's purchase history during the past twelve weeks.
(2) Suggestions for new meals recipes tailored to dietary preferences of the customer.
Shopping list generated from selected recipes
(1) Automatically compiles a grocery list from selected recipes.
(2) Organizes items based on in-store departments for a smooth shopping experience.
Daily meal preparation reminders
(1) Showcase 'upcoming meal plans' in Giant Eagle mobile app.
(2) Send reminder notifications during optimal meal preparation times for scheduled meals.
Concept Development
Prototype Testing
Our team adopted the paper prototyping method with storyboarding methods, in which we provided scenarios for participants to understand the context and present our ideas with some quick sketches. During the session, we asked participants to think aloud and sare their thoughts, and we conducted exit interviews with participants to seek feedback.
During paper prototyping and user testing, we identified three major pain points and addressed them.
Critical Feedback 01
Rigid weekly meal planning felt overwhelming for some customers.
Critical Feedback 02
Meal preparation reminders are mistimed and misinterpreted.
Solution
Replace fixed weekly calendars with a flexible 'Weekly Recipe Collection' - enable users to save recipes to a collection without assigning specific days.
Solution
Use multi-stage reminders to notify users of upcoming planned meals and actions needed for preparation.
User Flow
First-Time user onboarding: Input dietary preference settings.
User Flow
Searching for recipes based on dietary preferences or selected ingredients.
User Flow
Adding ingredients to cart from selected recipes and generate shopping list.
design sprint 4
Design Prototype
Positioning EagleKitchen within the existing mobile service.
Mapping the key touchpoints for introducing proposed features
Combined User Flow
How does EagleKitchen bridge interests from stakeholders?
Service Blueprint
Identifying key product strategies to maintain viability for the service.
Strategy 01
EagleKitchen tailors recipes through data‐driven personalization by analyzing purchase history and store inventory, ensuring every shopper receives targeted recommendations.
Strategy 02
The platform seamlessly connects recipes with real‐time product availability so customers can easily add ingredients to their cart and have them delivered without hassle.
Strategy 03
Eagle Kitchen provides timely alerts and meal prep reminders to foster proactive engagement, helping users stay organized and reducing last‐minute dinner stress.
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