How would you design a food delivery app for kids?

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How would you design a food delivery app for kids?

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rahul_g · Answer 1 · 2021-04-24T07:20:31+0000

Clarification
- Food delivery app for kids - is this going to be inside swiggy app like instamart etc sits inside (app in app experience) or standalone or is it it open to interpretation
  - Im assuming it's open to interpretation - I think I'll take this call later
- Is there's a specific goal behind this - NU growth or engagement or retention or open to interpretation - I'd like to focus on most suited product for the user which should capture engagement and retention goals by extension
- What is the definition of kids - which age group
  - Pre schooler
  - Pre teen school going 6 to 12 - may or may not own a smartphone , at least the younger range is more likely to not own up, closer to 12 the penetration is more meaningful
  - Adolscent 13 to 18 - use a smartphone, often parents have the smartphone controls
- Where is this app running - Kid's phone or parent's phone and kid is using it
  - Im assuming the latter since if it's running on parents phone then he/she will most likely to around to superwise
- Assuming this is In India
Who are the users
- Parents of the kids
- Kids themselves
User needs
- parents
  - Ensure kids eat healthy/dietary restrictions
  - they may be allocated a budget for food
  - There's might be family preferences as to what kind of food can be ordered
    - temp
    - permanent
  - They may need to approve purchases/pay for them
  - Need to aware that something's been ordered
  - cancel it if needed?
  - set up preferences of the kids
  - Only show kid diet friendly restaurants
  - can only place orders to certain destinations
  - answers complaints on support
  - not expose their kids to certain things like tobacco, adult goods
- Kids
  - New to smartphones so may need coaching
    - how to order
    - How parent approval process works
    - kid friendly recommendations
  - share an order with friends who are over or place an order for them which needs special approval
  - know if a certain thing has restricted so they dont get confused
  - raise complaints
  - may not want parents knowing exactly the contents of orders
User journey today
- Kid approaches parent
  - May have friends over
- Parents fires up the app
- Pick a restaurent that they kid will like or similar to ones they like
- Agree on food inline with restriction - price, veg/non veg, health/unhealthy etc, limit sugar intake
  - Takes a lot of time to find somehting kid friendly in the menu
- Select home for delivery
- Approve entry
- collect delivery
- may reach out to support if order is delayed ( parent deals with this)
- kid eats the food

Features + RICE score

Feature(kids app)	RICE
Kids mode app - hygiene/must have	HHHH - PICK
Family sign in using OTP- hygiene/must have + reducing sign up friction	HHHM - PICK
Set up restrictions : budget, price point, frequency, healthy/unhealthy, veg/non veg	HHHM - Pick
show only certain restaurants - parents may only prefer to show restaurants they want to order from	LMMM - later version(backlog)
Kid friendly Restaurant recommendations - needed also a data moat	HHHM - Pick
Kid friendly menu only - Differentiatior, must have (will need ops team to support)	HHHL - pick
Kiddy wallet - Parents can start giving kids a budget to order from	HHHM - given this is kids focussed product its a must
Approval - Parents can approve large spends on a per use case basis	HHHM - can be a later version since parents can have do the same from their phones
Support(including speaking to delivery exect)/notifs to parents devices no chats only direct calls - parents will need to approve the request to receive	MHHM - needed since parents wouldnt kids interacting with adults without supervision
Refunds to kids budget	Hygiene must have
Achievement linked rewards - parents can set up rewards basis tasks	MHMH - can be a differentiator, however its an advanced feature and ill seek PM fit before I invest in this
Left over budget - left over budget gets carried over to next week	hygiene, must
Refund leftover budget	parents can refund leftover budget to source

apart from the above the primary app(parents apps) will need changes to:

notifs integration for kids orders
approve requests
manage support
setup/tweak kids app
onboarding experience to drive awareness for the app to help with installs

Olga Vashchenko · Answer 2 · 2023-10-12T13:46:44+0000

1. Clarify the scope of the question

What do you mean by food delivery? delivery from a restaurant? grocery shop? launch delivery?

-Delivery from a nearest restaurant

Are we talking about a separate app or mode for existing?

-New, separate app.

What do you mean by children? Do you have any specific user group in mind?

-Children up to 15.

Do you have a specific country in mind?

-USA

Are we talking about web app or mob?

-mob

What is the main goal for this app?

-We want to increase the number of orders per family.

Do you have a specific use-case for this app in mind?

-No

2. List the user groups and chose the one you’re focusing on

Food delivery app is 3 sides marketplace, so we have 3 main type of users:

Users: Parents and children
Couriers
Restaurants

I’m going to focus on children, who need specific user experience.

I would divide children into next users segments:

0-5 years - too small, don’t have smartphones
6-10 years - some of them has smartphone, almost all the time with guidance.
11-15 years - have smartphones, stay at home alone.

I’m going to focus on 11-15 years group.

3. Describe user flow

Open app - confirm address - choose restaurant - choose food - pay - wait for order - get order

4. List the user needs for your user group

Choose correct street

Eat healthy food

Exclude allergens

Place order

Pay for this order

Don’t be bored while waiting

Safely get this order

5. Prioritize the user needs

I would focus on eating healthy food, because I think it's the most severe problem for children and their parents.

6. List your and evaluate your solutions

Needs	Solution	Impact	Cost	MVP
Choose correct street	GPS location	High	Mid.	+
Eat healthy food	Parents could set up restaurants list	High	Mid.	+
	Feedback and recommendations	Mid.	Low	-
	Parents could create excluding list for food or ingredients	Mid.	High	-
	Create gamification around healthy food or ingredients	Mid.	High	-
Place order	Send order immediately	High	Mid.	+
	Send order for verification	High	Mid.	+
	Send order immediately within allowed budget	Mid.	High	-
	Pre-order	Low.	High	-
	Send order immediately within allowed food	Mid.	High	-
Pay for this order	Pay order within allowed budget	Mid.	High	-
Pay for this order	Send order to parents for payment	High	Mid.	+
Don’t be bored while waiting	Add gamification or other entertaining content	Mid.	High	-
Safely get this order	Additional courier check (separate list) for this service	High	Mid.	+

7. Success metrics

I would like to track next funnel:

Number of acquired users - first order - retention - NPS

Joe_riley · Answer 3 · 2021-05-07T23:31:21+0000

Clarification and Understanding

The basic functionality of a food delivery app is as follows: User logs onto the app, chooses which restaurant or place they want to order food from, selects items from a menu, and then the food gets delivered directly to the user.

Can we clarify what we mean by kids? I would say a kid is anything from 0 - 12, but even within that range there is a large difference in autonomy between a 5 year old and a 10 year old. For the sake of this problem let's focus on kids aged 8 - 12. They will at least have some basic technical proficiency and be able to comprehend what food delivery means.

What is our main goal with this app? Do we have the luxury of focusing on engagement or should we focus on monetization? Everyone always focuses on engagement, so let's focus on monetization. I am going to approach this question with the context of the US in mind, but if the solution works for other countries as well great.

User Personas

1. Kids - These are the kids themselves who would be using the app. While there is a wide range of ability between kids, we mentioned previously that we were going to focus on 8 - 12 year olds. Will most likely need to have a clean easy to understand and use interface as they are in fact kids.

2. Parents / Guardians - These are the ones responsible for the child using the app and paying for what the child ordered.

3. Restaurants - The people who are preparing the food to be delivered. If the kid centric delivery app has enough traction it might be worth offering an extended kids menu through the app.

4. Delivery Drivers - The people responsible for delivering the food once it has been ordered. These may be 3rd parties or the restaurant's own personell.

With the goal of increasing monetization in mind, let's go ahead and focus on the parent user persona. Ultimately, they will be the ones paying for the food delivery service.

Pain Points / Needs

1. Want to be able to see what their child is ordering

2. Want to be able to control what their child can order

3. Want their child to eat healthy and balanced meals

4. Don't want to overspend on food

5. Want a convenient and easy to use experience

6. Need confirmation that the food has been delivered and the kid has received it

Solutions

Now that we have a better understanding of the different pain points parents face let's go ahead and brainstorm some solutions with increasing monetization as our end goal:

Meal Subscription service for kids - This would be a weekly subscription service that would deliver pre-selected meals at pre-determined dates and times throughout the week.
Food Gifting Capability - For special occasions or as a reward, parents could grant their kids permission in the app to order a dessert item. For example, if little Johnnie got an A on his math test his father could grant him a sundae within the app. Upon opening the app Johnnie would see a sparkling congratulations animation and a nice note from his father and then will have the ice cream sundae menu unlocked. Additionally, this could be used as a gift. For example, it is Little Susie's Birthday and Aunt Beckie lives far away but still wants to send her a cupcake she could gift Susie one through the app.
Group Order - This would a communal app experience for putting together a large delivery order. Instead of having to text or physically go ask everyone what they want from the Chinese Food restaurant you could share a delivery order URL with them and it would open up our delivery app where they could add items to the menu. The parent who started the order would then see everything selected and have final say in what gets ordered. If Susie sees her brother Johnnie asking for a Sunday for dessert she might want one too.

Prioritization

We don't have enough resources to build out all of these solutions in parallel so let's go ahead and prioritize one to focus on while keeping in mind that our focus is on monetization. Let's use the comparison matrix below to help guide our choice:

User Satisfaction, Monetizability, Ease of Implementation

A,A,B
B,B,B
B,C,A

I'm going to suggest we focus our efforts on prioritizing solution #1, the meal subscription service for kids. While this seems like it would be the most difficult to build out it seems like it would have the greatest monetization opportunity.

Solution #3 seems like a nice to have feature, but not necessarily something that users would want to pay extra for. While I could see the Food Gifting app increasing revenue through additional orders, with special occasions only happening once in a while I don't think we would do high enough of a volume to really impact our bottom line. With the sheer volume of food that would be ordered through a subscription service, I think that alone would give us our best shot at increasing revenue. Food delivery is a margin based business so we really need to capture a lot of volume for the numbers to make it worth our while.

Solution Explanation

Let's talk about the solution and why it is appealing to users a little more indepth. I am envisioning the majority of parents using a food delivery service for their children as busy working professionals who don't have the time to cook a proper meal and may not even be home during meal time.

Based off of the presence and popularity of Lean Cuisine's kid focused frozen meals "Kidcuisine" we know there is in fact a market for convenient low effort meals for kids. In recent years there has been a large movement towards eating healthier and organic, which is the opposite of a frozen "Kidcuisine" meal so this tells me there is really an opportunity here. Furthermore, users are used to paying more for convenience as well as paying more for healthy and fresh. If a user wants both convenient and fresh one would assume it would be expensive which is great for us since we are focused on monetization.

In terms of the app itself, the parent would choose a weekly subscription tier which would determine how many meals they want each week and when they want them delivered. Next we would allow the parent to choose which items they wanted their child to eat or we could share a parent approved menu with the child through the app and let them pick out which items they wanted to eat. We would use local restaurants in the area to fullfill the orders and much like today's delivery apps there would be a little map of the delivery driver on their way. After the food has been delivered the child could mark the order as received inside their app which would send a confirmation notification to the parent.

The beauty of this solution both its monetizability as well as its convenience to the user. The busy working parent can schedule this ahead of time at the begining of the month and not have to interrupt their work to order a meal everytime their child needs to be fed.

Random Thought: In order to compete with non-kid specific food delivery services, we could work with restaurants to provide adjustable portion sizes. An eight year old child does not need to eat the same half pound burger that an adult does.

Summary

In order to increase revenue, we are going to focus on the parent user persona and offer them a Meal Subscription Service for Kids. For a weekly fee, parents can choose healthy kid-friendly food items to be delivered at set times to their household.