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Me and my friend have been vegan for 4 years now. We decided to create a Veg/Vegetarian platform to help make the process of finding the available food options

by MM27 6y ago

Me and my friend have been vegan for 4 years now. We decided to create a Veg/Vegetarian platform to help make the process of finding the available food options easier. Two core features: (1) Search for any dish of your choice and see all the options, which you can filter by price, delivery, nutritional info etc. (2) Create your OWN MEAL and see which local restaurants could cook it for you. The site provides you with personalised feed, allows to have a prompt ‘chat’ with any restaurant, and sugests healthier options. It is designed for people with allergies, food intolerance and other diets just as much, due to the detailed meal info. Hope to hear your thoughts We’d really appreciate it. Thanks! Madina (In the video, only the ‘Create’ feature is shown)

schoen 6y ago
How do the restaurants feel about the customization inquiries? Have you found a good format for asking them this in a way that's not burdensome for them? (I've never seen an ordering mechanism before that started with ingredients and then went to restaurants rather than the other way around.)
- MM27 6y ago
  Hey! Yes, we’ve contacted restaurants about whether they can cook ‘off the menu’ and almost all of them said yes. The problem appeared in price estimation, thus a step to send your meal to the preferred places first is needed. Restaurants then see if they can cook and for which price (only those with the ingredients available). Also, they need to respond to the customer via the app asap, which is okay for most restaurants. There hopefully will be a feature to start with a restaurant and create from their own ingredients (like at Domino’s), as it can more appealing for some users, like you suggested
  - schoen 6y ago
    Cool, thanks for the reply! I'm a vegan living in a place with a lot of vegan options and I've sometimes been surprised that delivery apps don't have better data and interfaces to clearly say "really, only show me items that definitely match my dietary restrictions". Caviar/DoorDash has gotten a little better about this than it used to be, but is still not totally reliable. On the other hand, their user interface has many fewer steps than what you showed in the video, probably because it's not focused on customization as the first step, but more on discovery. I would imagine that customization is most relevant when people are relying getting things that are off-menu (maybe because they're in a place without many vegan restaurants or restaurants with good, clearly-marked vegan items). But maybe in places with a lot of vegan food discovery is more interesting, because people might like to learn about dishes or cuisines that they haven't ever tried before. It could be helpful to think about how to let users make that switch in focus easily, so that there's a clear path to choose either "I know exactly what I want and I'm curious who can be induced to cook it for me" or "I know exactly what my dietary restrictions are, but I'm wondering what interesting dishes are available in my area that I might not have thought of, or might not be thinking of right this minute".
    - MM27 6y ago
      Yay! Exactly! That’s what I was initially thinking:) So glad that it wasn’t something that only I thought was an issue. I did some research in London firstly and even thought it’s the city with the highest number of fully vegan restaurants (150+), there isn’t an app where I could ONLY see the vegan option without having to double check every time I open a delivery app like UberEats or Deliveroo, since the results I’m having after searching an item are mixed. So basically I thought, why isn’t there an app that is both: fully designed for vegans & vegetarians and has all the necessary data on the delivery options. It’d be so much easier and could hopefully save time from checking through places on HappyCow first and then seeing if they are listed on UberEats as well. Plus, the problem with the customization that I also thought would be interesting to try out and see how people and restaurants will react :) But yes, I agree it would be much more appealing for someone who lives in a big city like LA or London to actually discover the available options their restaurants offer instead of searching for their regular choices. And it could be done via the “Search” feature. It’s just that it’ll take us more time to develop it due to big data to be processed, but hopefully the app/ site will focus on 2 main issues: (1) help to find ALL options with as much info on the existing meals and places and (2) encourage people who live in places with less vegan/veggie places to start ordering what they like w/out worrying about the lack of options. And exactly as you said, those features could be in some way rewarding for different types of customers :) And thanks a lot for the feedback, it does really help us know what others think about the idea from their own experience and perspective!

by MM27 6y ago

schoen 6y ago

How do the restaurants feel about the customization inquiries? Have you found a good format for asking them this in a way that's not burdensome for them? (I've never seen an ordering mechanism before that started with ingredients and then went to restaurants rather than the other way around.)

MM27 6y ago
Hey! Yes, we’ve contacted restaurants about whether they can cook ‘off the menu’ and almost all of them said yes. The problem appeared in price estimation, thus a step to send your meal to the preferred places first is needed. Restaurants then see if they can cook and for which price (only those with the ingredients available). Also, they need to respond to the customer via the app asap, which is okay for most restaurants. There hopefully will be a feature to start with a restaurant and create from their own ingredients (like at Domino’s), as it can more appealing for some users, like you suggested
- schoen 6y ago
  Cool, thanks for the reply! I'm a vegan living in a place with a lot of vegan options and I've sometimes been surprised that delivery apps don't have better data and interfaces to clearly say "really, only show me items that definitely match my dietary restrictions". Caviar/DoorDash has gotten a little better about this than it used to be, but is still not totally reliable. On the other hand, their user interface has many fewer steps than what you showed in the video, probably because it's not focused on customization as the first step, but more on discovery. I would imagine that customization is most relevant when people are relying getting things that are off-menu (maybe because they're in a place without many vegan restaurants or restaurants with good, clearly-marked vegan items). But maybe in places with a lot of vegan food discovery is more interesting, because people might like to learn about dishes or cuisines that they haven't ever tried before. It could be helpful to think about how to let users make that switch in focus easily, so that there's a clear path to choose either "I know exactly what I want and I'm curious who can be induced to cook it for me" or "I know exactly what my dietary restrictions are, but I'm wondering what interesting dishes are available in my area that I might not have thought of, or might not be thinking of right this minute".
  - MM27 6y ago
    Yay! Exactly! That’s what I was initially thinking:) So glad that it wasn’t something that only I thought was an issue. I did some research in London firstly and even thought it’s the city with the highest number of fully vegan restaurants (150+), there isn’t an app where I could ONLY see the vegan option without having to double check every time I open a delivery app like UberEats or Deliveroo, since the results I’m having after searching an item are mixed. So basically I thought, why isn’t there an app that is both: fully designed for vegans & vegetarians and has all the necessary data on the delivery options. It’d be so much easier and could hopefully save time from checking through places on HappyCow first and then seeing if they are listed on UberEats as well. Plus, the problem with the customization that I also thought would be interesting to try out and see how people and restaurants will react :) But yes, I agree it would be much more appealing for someone who lives in a big city like LA or London to actually discover the available options their restaurants offer instead of searching for their regular choices. And it could be done via the “Search” feature. It’s just that it’ll take us more time to develop it due to big data to be processed, but hopefully the app/ site will focus on 2 main issues: (1) help to find ALL options with as much info on the existing meals and places and (2) encourage people who live in places with less vegan/veggie places to start ordering what they like w/out worrying about the lack of options. And exactly as you said, those features could be in some way rewarding for different types of customers :) And thanks a lot for the feedback, it does really help us know what others think about the idea from their own experience and perspective!