Meal Tab

As many as 85% of shoppers don't know what they're cooking that night, and it's rarely something new. Most save a recipe at home, then hunt down the ingredients later. Supermarkets are big and confusingly laid out, though, so anything unfamiliar becomes a chore. There had to be an easier way to find new meals and make the trip itself worth something.

With my team I ran 100 quick interviews in the aisles, 30 of them mine. One frustration surfaced again and again: finding a new recipe in a store costs more time and effort than it's worth, so people fall back on what they already know.

Two types emerged: the Explorer, after new ideas, and the Beginner, after something doable. Different experience levels, one shared wish, to save time and land a good meal without the hassle.

A single recipe category ran the original screen, and it buckled as the collection grew, the cards too thin to tell anything apart. People filter recipes a dozen ways, and the same person filters differently day to day, so I flattened the sub-categories into one hierarchy and led with recipes under 30 minutes to respect shoppers' time.

Three weeks in, we finally tested in a store, and it fell apart: a buggy build, and shoppers we tried to stop mid-shop who had no patience for it. Rather than force it, I pulled the team back to the goal that mattered, metrics that would convince store owners, and narrowed the ask to one thing, whether shoppers would even try this on sight. We rebuilt the welcome screen to earn that first glance, then tested it remotely with 50 users in Maze, the tablet mocked up as if clamped to a cart. People dove straight in from the welcome screen, so I made the old "how it works" overview optional and cut the friction.

The redesign and the numbers earned us a pilot with Gristedes Supermarkets in the West Village, a place to show owners a clear path to higher conversion and shoppers an experience they wanted to use.