Our client runs an independent deli known locally for award-winning sandwiches, salad bowls, and a wide range of customisable lunch items. With a loyal customer base and a busy lunchtime rush, they needed a faster, simpler way to take custom orders without the back-and-forth of phone calls and emails.
The brief was clear: replace the manual ordering process with a digital experience that gives customers full menu access, lets them customise every order, and delivers a clean, standardised order to the kitchen. In under a month, we delivered a working web app ready for real customers.
Where the Client Was Before Shape
The client already offered click and collect, but the existing setup had clear limits:
- The current system only offered their most popular sandwiches and salad bowls, with no real customisation
- Custom orders required customers to phone or email, creating friction at peak times
- There was no way for customers to save favourites or quickly reorder a previous order
- Every custom order was handled manually, slowing service and making consistency harder for the kitchen
They needed a single digital flow that handled custom orders end-to-end, freed up staff time, and made repeat ordering effortless for regulars.
What Shape Delivered
We worked with the client using our rapid product development approach, the same process behind our Product Accelerator, and shipped a working web app in under a month.
Product strategy and MVP scope
We started with a focused discovery session to map the existing ordering journey and pinpoint exactly where customers and staff were losing time. From there we scoped a tight MVP around the highest-value features: full menu customisation, fast sign-in, order history, and favourites. Anything that did not directly serve those goals was deferred.
End-to-end ordering experience
We designed a simple, guided journey covering sign-in, building a custom order, scheduling collection, and confirming with the kitchen. The user flow replaces what used to be a phone call or email back-and-forth with a single, structured process that customers can complete in under a minute.
Standardised orders for the kitchen team
Every order is converted into a clean, colour-coded confirmation email so the kitchen receives a consistent, easy-to-read summary instead of phone notes or scattered messages. Categories are visually grouped, removing the manual interpretation that used to slow service at peak times.
Frictionless customer accounts
Sign-in is passwordless: customers receive a one-time code by email and log in with a single tap. There are no passwords to reset and no friction blocking a hungry customer mid-order, while accounts remain secure. Saved order history and favourites make repeat ordering effectively one tap.
