Designing an order scheduling & subscription feature for Swiggy.

My Process

• Due to the time constraint of 8-10 hours, most of my research comprised of secondary research. I have also made suitable assumptions wherever more information was needed.
• Owing to time constraints, I had to skip wireframing. I drew a few rough sketch and jumped directly to designing the interfaces.

Constraints

• Choice of platform?
  I chose mobile as the platform as most users prefer the app over web for ordering food. Moreover most of the foodtech companies provide special offers that can be availed on the mobile app only.
• Choice of app?
  I went ahead with Swiggy as it is the app that I have personally used the most and I am most familiar with. I also believe Swiggy has a more well defined UI style than Zomato or other competitors.

Some Assumptions

• Swiggy as well as the partner restaurants have the technical capability to execute a food scheduling feature & a subscription service.
• Partner restaurants cooperate with Swiggy to help them create food subscription packs.
• The food scheduling feature is launched first. After taking the customer response and usage into consideration, the subscription feature is launched in a couple of months.
• Order scheduling behaviour of the users can be recorded and be used to curate subscription packs for the user.

ABOUT PREORDERING / SCHEDULING

Preordering is a service provided by business to their users that allows them to order products scheduled for a later launch / delivery. Businesses may or may not allow the users to specify their preferred date and time of delivery.

What are the advantages?

1. For Businesses:

• Improves inflow of money
• Accurate prediction of product demand
• Number of succesful deliveries 📈

2. For Customers:

• More convenience, peace of mind
• Avoiding last minute hassle and panic
• Perks provided by businesses on preordering

Preordering in food-tech businesses

• Companies like Uber Eats and GrubHub offer a food preordering feature (not in India).
• Swiggy also launched Swiggy Scheduled in a couple of metro cities in 2018 (on a trial basis), but the current status of this feature is unknown.

Use cases of food order scheduling

1. Bachelors, Hostel Dwellers...

• Mayank is a bachelor working in Mumbai.
• He wants to have a nice dinner when he comes back home after a long day at the office.
• Can’t afford a maid to cook for him, therefore usually depends on food delivery apps.
• Therefore, he schedules his dinner order in advance, so that his dinner gets delivered at his preferred time.

2. Special Occasions and Parties...

• Suraj is a businessman and a father to a son.
• He wants to host a party for his son’s birthday.
• He wants the party to be perfect & doesn’t want any last minute hassles to ruin it.
• Therefore, he preorders all the required food items, so that they arrive right in time for the birthday party.

3. Gym goers, fitness freaks...

• Vinay is a regular gym goer and follows a strict vegan diet.
• He has to spend a lot of time in preparing his pre & post workout meals.
• Procuring the ingredients is also difficult.
• Therefore he regularly schedules his order from his preferred restaurant and saves a ton of time.

Features

• Orders can be scheduled upto 4 days in advance. (I have assumed 4 days to be an appropriate number of both the business as well as the consumer)
• Users can choose their preferred delivery time within the bounds of the restaurants' opening and closing times.
• Scheduled orders are available for a free delivery, if the total order value is above a minimum threshold (Let us assume Rs. 100)
• Scheduled orders can be placed during the closing time of the restaurant as well. But the order will only be accepted when the restaurant opens.
• Users can cancel a scheduled order only before the order goes 'live' i.e. gets accepted. After that the user will have to chat with the Swiggy support staff for cancellation related queries.
• Orders can be rescheduled only till 6 hours before the actual delivery time.
• Restaurants can also choose to decline the order. The user will be notified in this scenario.

Scheduling an order

Rescheduling and already scheduled order

Cancellation of a scheduled order

Order declined by restaurant

• Order can be declined by the restaurant due to many reasons, like ‘Item not available’, ‘Restaurant closed’ etc.
• In these cases, the user will be notified immediately & will be assured that his refund will get initiated soon.
• The user can also be suggested other restaurants offering the same food items.
• Can also provide coupon codes to the user to make up for the inconvenience caused.

Now extending this to a subscription service

• Subscription services are on a boom nowadays. According to a survey, 15% of online shoppers have tried atleast 1 subscription service.
• In India, subscription services have been around for 100s of years:

• Subscription services are becoming popular because they keep delivering regularly & let the consumer “forget” about their requirements.

Use cases of food subscriptions

• Use cases of scheduling can be extended to subscriptions as well.
• For eg: After a couple months of scheduling orders, Mayank (the bachelor) feels that the process is getting repetitive. Therefore, he subscribes to a Dinner food pack, where he gets dinner suited to his taste from his favourite restaurants.

Features

• Daily, bi-weekly & weekly food subscription service by Swiggy.
• Users can:

• Users can set their preferred delivery times (within the constraints of the restaurant).
• Free delivery on all subscription orders - Perk to encourage subscribing.
• Payment - Monthly auto deduction (just like popular subscriptions - Netflix, Spotify etc).
• Cancel anytime - Subscriptions can be discontinued at any time.
• Skip or Swap - Users can skip the delivery on a particular day, or swap it with the oder of another day (only till 1 day before the scheduled delivery). There will be a limit to the number of skips & swaps allowed.

Personalising the experience

• Nudges the user to answer some questions & build his profile, to have better food packs suggested to him.
• Isn’t mandatory - allows the user to explore without having to complete these steps.
• Food packs will be curated based on past orders if this is skipped (User will be told on choosing this option)

What is a food pack?

• Curated based on the preferences filled (of food as well as restaurants) as well as past orders of the user.
• Based on different cuisines (North indian, south indian), fitness goals (weight loss, sugar-free), type of meal (lunch, dinner) etc.
• Have a dynamic menu that is updated weekly. Different days can have orders from different restaurants.

Subscribing to a food-pack

Metrics to assess the success of the features

• The frequency of scheduled orders
• Average order value of scheduled orders
• Frequency of rescheduling and cancellation
• Number of rescheduled & cancelled orders