Unlocking Whole Foods Market Catering on Amazon

Whole Foods Market

2023-2024

Allocating and tracking Catering inventory items during the busy holiday season across multi-channel ordering channels. I was the sole designer working on the new tool, collaborating with product management and engineering to develop designs, vision, and prioritize roadmap.

🚀 SOON — Managing Catering inventory across online and in-store channels.

To facilitate the implementation of a newly developed front-end (powered by Amazon) for ordering Catering on Whole Foods Market's website, it is essential to rebuild the backend infrastructure and Catering inventory tracking capabilities. The goal of accurately allocating and maintaining inventory ensures we do not under or over promise highly desirable items such as the main turkey and family meals to customers. Inaccurate data could result in broken trust with a customer who relied on Whole Foods to provide a holiday meal for their event.

The Problem

Team Member

Single bucket of inventory is not tracked between online and in-store channels which makes it difficult to see how the items are being distributed and where sales are happening
Current system does not provide a way to pause items that need attention (out of stock ingredients, in-adequate containers etc)

Business

Over-promising inventory results in broken trust with the customer
Under-promising inventory results in lost sales and increased cost from shrink and spoilage
Holiday Catering presents several unique product availability challenges that need to be accounted for in a scalable solution to provide both a reliable and operationally efficient process.
Customers can reserve items 4-6 weeks prior to having their order fulfilled, and as soon as 48 hours prior to fulfillment. This means that the inventory, or the ingredients necessary to produce the inventory, are not always at the fulfilling location (store) at the time of the reservation.

Platform

Current platform does not support perpetual ingredient tracking to ensure ingredients are readily available for manufactured catering items (macaroni and cheese)
Current system is 3rd party which inhibits us to create enhanced features and is very costly to the business

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I met with key stakeholders from Product, Engineering and Business to present key findings from user testing so we could align on a differentiated storefront. I showcased the pros and cons of each approach and we collectively aligned on a differentiated storefront. This ensures:

No cart conflict when checking out separately
No confusion between fulfillment promises
Clear and logical ingress and egress points that enables customers to orient themselves
Alignment with customers primary mission to order catering
Browse, search and filtering UX is for the catering menu only

Through a mix of user testing and generative research, we uncovered the distinct needs of the catering customer. The insights compelled us to re-work the project plan and allow more time for up-front discovery work. Now the real work begins...

Flow 2: Meals planned to perfection

Audience: Families, Culinary Enthusiasts

This second concept sets out to provide our avid planners with a tool that makes them super shoppers. When we reduce the time from planning, we can focus on building satisfaction. Shopping for groceries becomes more delightful when focusing on the food you love. These screens focus on the mobile app experience in which we focused on reducing the friction our customers experience as they plan their meals for the week. Building your meal plan translates into building your cart at the same time. Build your own bundle too!

After some rapid and informal research, it became evident that customers in the meal planner group enjoy creating weekly meal plans, even specifying days when they don't require meals. These plans are usually crafted based on the ingredients in their fridge and pantry, inspiration from recipes or favorites, and family preferences.

Title

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Flow 3: All of your favorites, automated

Audience: Single professionals, dual-income households

Looking further into the future, can we leverage what we know about our customers to create an intelligent and personalized shopping experience that can do the shopping for you? We want to allow for full customization and control for those who want it, or no work at all. Either way, groceries show up every week. Think automated meal plans or an auto-generated cart.

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Flow 3: All of your favorites, automated

Audience: Single professionals, dual-income households

Looking further into the future, can we leverage what we know about our customers to create an intelligent and personalized shopping experience that can do the shopping for you? We want to allow for full customization and control for those who want it, or no work at all. Either way, groceries show up every week. Think automated meal plans or an auto-generated cart.

Basil Design System

Taking on the overhaul of the website necessitated the creation of a new digital design language system. This system is designed to embody and reflect the brand essence, conveying organic, intuitive and welcoming. In technical terms, it needs to be extensible, accessible, and reusable

“The Whole Foods Market website should be Disneyland for food lovers. It should inspire the senses, spark a sense of discovery, encourage people to explore — while conveying a sense of order and ease.”

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Moderated Concept Testing

Remote Moderated Prototype Evaluation with n=21 customers

Key questions:

What features were users gravitating towards?
What brings them the most hesitation?
How did the site make them feel compared to shopping in-store?
Would they be more likely to use this site or stay on Amazon?

Overwhelming positive feedback proved that customers were interested in the following themes when it comes to shopping for groceries online.
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1. Increased Efficiency
2. Inspirational Content and Recommended Items
3. Personalization
4. Brand Recognition

Post Launch

In-store Pickup Location

During store intercepts, customers were not clear where they needed to pick up their order. Store layouts are unique from store to store which makes it difficult to implement a solution across all stores. We worked with Marketing to design clear signage designating where to go after placing the order as well as displaying a map on the confirmation screen.

(OUTCOME and OPPORTUNITIES)

(1-Outcome)

Full launch Thanksgiving '24

Stay tuned.

(2-Opportunities)

Automation

Eliminate the need to import inventory data via spreadsheets and integrate with automated purchase orders.

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(3-Project Team)‍

Dream Team

Product Design Lead: Hanisha Patel

UX Manager: Natalie Dare

Product Manager: Mark Misudek

Development: WFM and Amazon Engineering

*All images are owned by Whole Foods Market.

🚀 SOON — Managing Catering inventory across online and in-store channels.

Moderated Concept Testing

Remote Moderated Prototype Evaluation with n=21 customers

Post Launch

In-store Pickup Location

(OUTCOME and OPPORTUNITIES)

Full launch Thanksgiving '24

Automation

Dream Team

Let's make something (together)

-> Available for projects.