COVID. Gastronomy. Digitalization.

UX/UI concept for a Berlin restaurant.

Time scope.
6 months

Institution.
Bachelor thesis at HMKW Berlin

The situation.
COVID reached Germany in 2020. Restaurants and bars needed to close down. The pandemic showed severe deficiencies when it came to digitalization – also noticeable in gastronomy. Due to sanitary reasons, restaurants stopped handing printed menus out to customers. Instead – they received QR codes linking to online PDFs. That made it harder for customers who haven’t had any reception or who didn’t bring their phones to order.

The idea.
Developing a concept for implementing digital services – helping to optimize a restaurant’s daily business.

The execution.
Working together with a Berlin restaurant, the aim was to develop a strategy to redesign the menu and the customer’s experience – inside and outside the restaurant. I built the foundation by gathering information about Customer Experience, gastronomy’s history, and how digital transformation is being implemented in Germany. Throughout my research, I interviewed gastronomy and digitalization experts as well as German politicians. Based on my research, I developed a landing page, where clients can preorder food and drinks and pick it up from the restaurant. During the order process, they may choose their favorite time and meal to make sure, the meal is still available when picking it up. By implementing a CMS, the staff can easily edit and place products. The CMS is connected to the payment system, so that manual billing is redundant once the customer comes by for pickup. Clients save time and there are no waiting lines. By creating illustrations reflecting the restaurant’s vibe, standards, and ingredients – the website is not only is straightforward and intuitive, but is also visually pleasing.