Giant Eagle SmartEats
DETAILS
TIMELINE
January - May 2024
ROLE
UX & Service Designer with 3 other designers
PROBLEM
Giant Eagle has a presence in the world of meal solutions (meal kits, prepared food, etc.), but wants to understand how they might compete with the big players in this space. How might we find success among our customers, and even potentially disrupt this industry?
CONTEXT
Giant Eagle is looking for ways to improve their revenue in this area. Their problem was very open-ended, but they did identify some potential considerations/areas of improvement for us to get started:
Increasing online grocery purchases
Opportunity to grow curbside pickup and delivery
Increase smaller basket sizes and purchases
Connecting the in-person and online shopping experience to grow the app user base
RESEARCH
To build a foundation and uncover areas of improvement, we conducted experiential research, guerilla research, competitive analysis, and interviews with 8 shoppers at both Giant Eagle and competing grocery stores, uncovering shopping habits, blockers, and pain points.
One Stop Shop
Shoppers don't have the time to go into the store mid-week for small items, they buy everything they need for the week on one day.
Shopping for a family
The Family Dinner Dilemma
Giant Eagle's takeout skews toward individual meals, but most shoppers are feeding a family — and planning what to cook for the week is a struggle.
Ingredient to Recipe Gap
There's a missed opportunity to guide users from “what do I need?” to “what can I make?” by suggesting recipes during grocery list creation—particularly when meal ideas are unclear.
Through our research, we reframed our problem statement:
HOW MIGHT WE…
How might we help shoppers figure out what to cook and get what they need — without another trip to the store?
WHAT DOES SMARTEATS DO?
WHERE DOES SMARTEATS COME INTO PLAY?
Taking a broader look, we mapped out how and where SmartEats would come into play and how it would affect the process of purchasing ingredients for delivery.
As shown above, the current process for ordering grocery delivery is quite tedious and complicated. With SmartEats, the process is much more simple and concise, especially on the shopper's side.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR SHOPPERS?
Save time and effort. Save a trip to the store and get missing ingredients delivered while you prep the rest.
Reduce decision fatigue. Providing solutions at the point of indecisiveness and hunger alleviates emotional distress.
Prevent food waste. Notify shoppers what they could cook with previous purchases before they go bad.
Save money. Remind and encourage shoppers that cooking costs less than eating out.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR GIANT EAGLE?
Cooking more = buying more. Efficient grocery use encourages more frequent shopping.
Increased brand loyalty. Encouraging cooking keeps shoppers buying from Giant Eagle and away from competitors.
IMPROVEMENTS
After figuring out what to design, we refined the designs based on shopper feedback.
Adding Shoppers' Taste Preferences
Recommended recipes are useful based off of shopping history, but shoppers thought it could be improved by tailoring it to users’ tastes and preferences as well.
BEFORE
AFTER
Scheduled Delivery
Our design before only allowed for purchase for immediate delivery. We learned that as shoppers planned their meals out for the week, they also wanted to have their ingredients scheduled so that they could forget about it and have it delivered right before cooking for optimal freshness.
BEFORE
AFTER
Savings and Waste Reminder
A notification recommending a specific recipe might not be enough for people to choose to cook, but showing food waste and saving specific amount of money helps overcome that motivation barrier.
BEFORE
AFTER
SOLUTION
Find out how much time, money, & food waste you’ve saved
METRICS
If we had access to/had enough time to work with the Giant Eagle team to implement this feature, I would have loved to see:
Daily/weekly SmartEats users
Item delivery revenue
Increase in item purchases
Recipe completion rates
REFLECTIONS & LEARNINGS
The dual stakeholder constraint shapes every decision.
In service design, every feature had to work for both the shopper and Giant Eagle's business model. That's a different kind of constraint than a typical product design project.
Designing for behavior change is different from designing for tasks.
SmartEats isn't just helping people complete a task — it's trying to change a habit. That's a harder design problem and its success would have to be measured long term.