Innovating Jacob's Kitchen

A restaurant located in Diemen, 20 minutes away from the center of Amsterdam, on a student campus. They offer a casual dining experience, mostly comfort food with Asian and Dutch influences, and a wide variety of homemade drinks, in a friendly atmosphere. It was my second home during my studies, as I worked in this kitchen for four years.

This represented my graduation project, and I have partnered with Jacob's Kitchen to help the company innovate and grow. The restaurant was looking for new ways of getting customers, offering better services, adapting to the changing needs of the target groups, and setting the path for future growth.

Goals/Requirements:

Project Plan

Research Report

Solution Report

Implementation Report

All these reports contain all of the information and insights needed to make the proposed changes.

The whole project took almost 5 months, so it had to be very well planned.

Starting with the plan, everything had to be documented and the client had to receive all of the underlying work, not only the final deliverables. It was a collaborative project, where I was working closely with the client and the different stakeholders in each different step.

We started working on this precisely two months before the pandemic, so we had a lot of setbacks and approach changes. The solution suffered multiple iterations, and the final version contains many separate elements, from new services to a revamped marketing strategy and a custom mobile app.

The project also contains concrete testing and implementation plans, with tasks spread between the short, mid, and long terms, and with clear time and money considerations.

Here are some of the proposed innovations:

StewStore - the ghost kitchen 🔪

The trend of ghost kitchens has been growing in the past years, and the pandemic pushed it to record heights. A ghost kitchen is a kitchen that only sells food through delivery apps like UberEats, Foodora, and Deliveroo, so they don't serve customers inside a restaurant.

StewStore was launched by Jacob's Kitchen at the beginning of 2020.

The JK App 📱

A custom app for a restaurant that targets students and young professionals is a must. The company can enable users to personalize their experience, set food preferences, benefit from loyalty programs, and many more.

The app is designed to have innovative functionalities like visual table reservation (AR), a digital menu and ordering system (replacing the printed menus), and visual customization of dishes.

Digitalization 👨🏼‍💻

Jacob's Kitchen was not doing delivery before the pandemic, and this was one of the main reasons why they did it - to survive. Now, deliveries almost surpass the number of restaurant-goers because of the changing needs and behavior of consumers.

The business necessitated a complete digital overhaul, including online ordering, a new digital marketing, and social media strategy, and a new website.

Jacob Owner

Takeaways 📣

Because my student job was here and it represents one of the best times of my life, I also felt the need to bring some real value to the business. Jacob, the owner, and I are close friends, and conducting a project in these circumstances is highly rewarding and motivating.

A project as big as this one takes a lot of time due to the different variables that have to be considered. On top of that, the pandemic made us change goals, deadlines, and priorities multiple times and made it even harder. Nevertheless, this was the most important innovation project for me because it signified the end of my student life and the beginning of the next chapter.