Meal Tab

As many as 85% of shoppers don't know what they're cooking that night, and it's rarely something new. Most people save a recipe at home and then hunt for the ingredients. But supermarkets are big and confusingly laid out, so trying anything unfamiliar is a chore. Could there be an easier way to find new meals and make the trip itself more engaging?

With my team I ran 100 quick interviews with shoppers in the aisles. The same frustration kept surfacing: finding new recipes in a store takes more time and effort than it's worth, so people default to what they already know.

Two types showed up again and again: the Explorer, who wants new ideas, and the Beginner, who wants something doable. Different experience levels, same wish, to save time and find a good meal without the hassle.

The original screen had a single recipe category, which fell apart as the collection grew, and the cards didn't carry enough useful information. People filter recipes in many ways, and the same person filters differently day to day, so I put the sub-categories on one flat hierarchy and led with recipes under 30 minutes to respect shoppers' time.

Three weeks in, we finally tested in a store, and it was a mess: the build was buggy and testing people mid-shop was awkward. Instead of forcing it, I pulled the team back to our actual goal, metrics that would convince store owners, and asked a smaller question: would shoppers even try this if they saw it? We rebuilt the welcome screen to earn that first glance and tested it remotely with 50 users in Maze, with the tablet mocked up as if attached to a cart. People dove in straight 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, where we could show a clear path to higher conversion for the store and an experience customers actually wanted to use.