Fresh Chef is a meal-kit delivery service targeting those who want to save money on grocery shopping and reduce time spent preparing complicated recipes. It can be adapted for cooking savvy individuals or beginner level who are interested in learning new skills all while eating balanced, healthy, meals. Fresh Chef encourages users to upload their own favorite recipes, such as your mom's famous lasagna, and earn points towards their next meal delivery this way.
You walk into the kitchen, open the fridge, and feel a sudden wave of disappointment wash over you. Thoughts start rushing through your mind, "What do I have to eat?", "What can I make with these random food items?", "I need to go grocery shopping!", "What am I going to eat?"
You go to the living room to relax and figure out what to do next. The easiest thing to do would be to order take-out again for the third time this week. However, you are tired of ordering takeout and decide to find a quick recipe with minimal ingredients instead. You go on Pinterest and Instagram to find inspiration for a quick recipe with minimal ingredients and find one that has only 3-4 ingredients!.
You go back to the kitchen with the 3-4 ingredient list and found that you don't have all the ingredients, and are missing some crucial ones. You feel disappointed and sad but determined to make something healthy to eat so that you will have something for today and few days after instead of just to order takeout and eat it all in the same night.
You find the strength to go back out, after you just got home from your long day, to the grocery store to buy the missing ingredients. However, you see all kinds of goodies at the store and figure why not buy them as well. you pick up some cookies, bread, more pastas, coffee creamers and more things not on the list. You go to pay and you spent way more than you thought you would on more random food items.
You arrive back home and go straight to the kitchen with all the ingredients, and other random food items you bought earlier. Pull up the recipe again and start to make dinner. You are following along and it all seems easy enough until they start describing in words what to do and you don't understand what those techniques mean. You start to look up on google "what is Julian Slicing"? You continue to go with the recipe and finally you have a finished product.
Conducted 14 interviews with people ranging from 18-60. The first synthesis revealed three potential personas—people that enjoy
cooking because they need to, people who have a passion for cooking, and people who are adverse to any cooking experience.
When the interviewees were asked about their cooking experience from start to finish, people like Busy Betty and Anti Abbey were noticeably troubled by the process. It was clear that they placed more importance on pain points and success than Chef Carol, who enjoyed the process and had a higher success rate of food preparation.
Brands offered in Israel rely on the takeout concept, meaning door-to-door meal delivery. These services, like Yummi, depend upon the participation of local restaurants.
Fresh Chef expands users’ access to international brands and recipes and provides an enjoyable educational experience for those new to cooking and meal preparation. By eliminating “pain points” in the cooking process, users can participate fully in enjoyable experience of learning about new foods and ingredients, and gain a sense of competency in the kitchen.
Key Point: Hello Fresh and Blue Apron succeed in creating a more hands-on, creative cooking experience. However, meal kits must be ordered a week in advance, lacking the convenience of same-day delivery. Israeli brands provide immediate satisfaction and keep users out of the kitchen.
After reviewing different options, we found that creating a search-and-discover game could spark creativity and involvement of friends and family in food preparation. This sets Fresh Chef apart from other meal delivery apps. Additionally, the inclusion of a “My Cookbook” feature where recipes could be saved and annotated appeared to be appealing to users. The ability to fully customize recipes to dietary needs and portion sizes was also a desirable feature. Lastly, delivery of pre-measured, pre-packed fresh ingredients via a distribution center met an important need for simplicity and ease of use among users.
The following sketches and wireframes show the core features illustrated in the animations above.
Here, users have the option to search for specific recipes, choose from dietary options (vegan, meat-lovers) and participate in a spin-the-wheel game for a randomly-chosen recipe.
Once users choose their meal kit, they can check off the desired number of portions, and even delete items they do not wish to include.
My Cookbook is the user’s personal chef’s diary, where notes can be recorded. Follow-along instructions with detailed step-by-step descriptions of the cooking process are featured.
To create a user-friendly meal delivery kit platform that simplifies the process of creating delicious and healthy meals. This platform allows users to plan their meals throughout the week—even weeks in advance—and have all the fresh ingredients shipped to their doorstep. All that’s left to do is assemble the meal and enjoy. The tedium of finding a recipe, purchasing the ingredients, and hauling bags of groceries home is taken out of the equation.
With this feature, users can search for recipes via the search bar or peruse categories offering specific recipes depending on dietary needs and requirements.
Serving numbers and sizes are fully customizable, offering adjustments to ingredients based on dietary needs, preferences, allergies, sensitivities, and individual palates.
A folder to store favorite and flagged recipes creates a highly personalized, easy-to-access cookbook. Each recipe provides step-by-step pictures and easy-to-follow explanations for meal preparation, as well as opportunities for users to jot down cooking tips and helpful notes.
Ideally, users will arrive home from a long day at work and have all the essentials of a delicious just waiting to be cooked up for themselves, as well as their entire family.
