Challenge
Whilst mobile technology occupies most aspects of daily life, the hospitality industry has remained largely untouched by digital solutions. Ian Martin and Paul Kirkland want to change that by challenging the traditional model of ordering in bars and restaurants. Their solution, Pour, is a comprehensive mobile platform that digitises the experience of a night out on the town, a family meal or even just picking up a sandwich for lunch. Existing problem The hospitality industry has seen ordering apps come and go over the years. Whitelabel and brand-specific apps from companies such as JD Wetherspoons and Brewdog offer solutions for individual bar and restaurant chains, however the industry lacks an experience driven platform that encompasses many venues in a given town or city. The COVID-19 crisis sparked an immediate demand for contactless ordering solutions. Venues that may have previously resisted digitising the ordering process now viewed this as a valid solution to protect both staff and customers whilst maintaining a close to normal service. The stage was set to adapt the Pour platform as a ready-to-go solution for bars and restaurants desperate to re-open and welcome back customers.
Solution
The Pour MVP offers a digital solution for ordering that goes beyond a simple transaction tool. Pour’s management system gives venues full control over their orders, their inventory, menus, tables and more. The customer’s experience is also made easier than ever, with a simple ordering system and Stripe integration for quick, safe and importantly, contactless transactions. Workshop sessions Ian & Paul arrived at the Bad Dinosaur workshop with more than just an app idea; they came with a plan and a vision of their company five, ten years down the line. We were quickly able to narrow in on their plans to capture the independent and small chain pubs & restaurant market. We designed their proposition to help those businesses up their technological game, and hopefully carve out future ventures in the entertainment sector. Design We love to help a client shape their idea into something truly special. When Ian and Paul came to us with their idea for a location driven drinks ordering app, we were immediately excited about what it could become. Pour was to revolutionise the ordering experience on both the customer and venue side in a seamless manner. Together we envisioned the app's potential to become even more. Pour could be a comprehensive city guide and night out companion: encompassing events, personalised offers/recommendations and real-time venue information and statistics. At its core, Pour brings together venues across a given town or city and allows customers to place and manage food and drinks orders. Ian and Paul loved the idea that Pour would be an essential companion for tourists and locals alike - showcasing the very best a place has to offer. Our early concepts give the user, at a glance, the ability to determine what venues are nearby, how busy they are and how to get there. Users are able to find real-time information on a venue as part of an immersive digital experience that puts them in the heart of the action. Video, photography, live music promotions and more, bring the venue to life in the palm of the user’s hand. The vision for Pour as a showcase for best a city has to offer extended into our design for its menu. We wanted to make a feature of the menu and go beyond a simple inventory list. Early concepts envision the menu as a ‘bar’ with beer bottles, pints, glasses of wine etc as a rich swipeable carousel. The individual products have, like the venue itself, an area to showcase their brand - a feature with potential to highlight and promote local producers. The customer side is only one half of Pour’s unique design however. Staff and venue managers were for Pour founders Ian and Paul, an essential part of the concept. Venues now largely utilise POS systems to log and track customer orders. However Pour’s requirement for live orders required a re-think of the traditional POS user interface. We loved the carousel idea from the customer experience and envisioned staff having a similar tap and swipe driven interface on a tablet. The printed ticket line used in bars and commercial kitchens inspired the orders interface designed for staff/manager use. Order tickets populate the row in real-time as users complete their food or drinks order. Tickets provide staff with all the information they need to prepare the order. We wanted to give the staff and venue control and accountability over each order and so designed an order approval flow for accepting or rejecting orders and providing customers with real-time information on their orders or any issues the venue may be experiencing. Reporting tools gather data from orders and staff activity for venue managers to track. Full control over inventory is given to managers, who with a single click, can turn products, categories or whole menus on or off. With these tools and more, managers have full control over how users see and interact with their venue. How did we design it? The Pour product carousel Menus can often be monotonous and uninspiring elements of the user experience. As we approached each feature of Pour, we did so with the ambition of making it as exciting and immersive as possible - and the menu was to be no exception. The product carousel was designed as an early concept for Pour’s menu system as a way of bringing customers closer to a venue’s food and drink offerings. How products are branded and displayed in venues is a significant factor in driving sales. Branded glassware, coasters, bar mats, bottles, videos and posters all help to reinforce brand recognition. The concept for Pour’s menu would support this immersion and allow venues to promote products to customers in a way that’s in line with their in-house methods. Using Adobe XD’s animation tools, we were able to present an interactive concept to Ian and Paul based on early sketches and static wire-frame mock-ups. An alternative version was proposed that presented menu items as branded ‘coasters’ - inspired by beer tap and drinks coaster branding in bars. Oweing to the additional assets required, Ian and Paul decided to hold back the feature from the MVP version of the clickable, however the vision for showcasing products remains an important part of the overall concept and one that is set to evolve further post-launch. Development The COVID-19 crisis shattered the hopes of many young companies with great aspirations, however for Ian and Paul, it provided the lifeline to kickstart their product’s development. With support from the COVID-19 Innovation Fund, Pour had the backing to work towards an MVP release of their product. The build required further work from the team to shape Pour into a format that would address the issues posed by the phased re-opening and social distance requirements faced by venues as part of the ‘new normal’ for indoor and outdoor spaces. Our MVP mentality at Bad Dinosaur helps us build and deliver functional and immersive products for our clients and their users as efficiently as possible. The date for the reopening of venues post-lockdown presented a short time window for launching Pour into a market set to be saturated with contactless ordering solutions. This tight deadline posed a significant challenge for the development and design team at Bad Dinosaur and called for close collaboration with Ian, Paul and their CTO Colin Waddel to produce a ‘MVP-light’ version of Pour in a lean and highly efficient manner. Making the process as collaborative as possible meant progress was swift as the clients were always fully involved in design and development decisions with support from our team. Decisions such as prioritising inventory CSV upload for venues and integrating Stripe for the payment process made sure that both the manager and customer experience would be streamlined. The rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation meant that additional features were required during the development process to meet with new government guidelines. The whole team needed to be agile and adaptive to the changing situation, designing new solutions as we went. Collection of customer’s details without full registration requirement, table QR codes linking directly to menus and customisable table location input, were just some of the amendments made that meant that the ordering process would be fast and adaptable to venue changes. The menu system was a feature that we gave careful consideration to. Bars are able to group products into menus to allow for better control over when and where their products are available. Customers have access to the full menu from a single page and browse it through a series of anchors and a master search - speeding up the entire ordering process.
Results
The Pour MVP launched in early August 2020, just as venues were reopening their doors to customers. With several popular venues already signed up in Edinburgh and beyond, Ian and Paul are extremely pleased with the initial reception and have a larger market share in their sights going forward. Following launch, the Bad Dinosaur team have been busy refining the additional features held back from version 1.0. We can’t wait to see where we can take Pour and look forward to continuing working with Ian, Paul and Colin on this amazing product.
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