Client:
Giant Eagle Grocery Chain
Service Designer & UX Designer
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Giant Eagle

Client

Giant Eagle Grocery Chain

Solution

Food Delivery Service Innovation & Mobile App

Direct Contribution

UI Design, User Research, Usability Testing, Service Design

Year

2024

Scope of Work

2 Months

Location

Pittsburgh, PA

Giant Eagle is a prominent supermarket chain primarily operating in the northeastern United States, with roots tracing back to its founding in 1931 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shoppers tend to have “one big shop” every Thursday for the entire week. Around Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week, customers are tired of cooking and are running out of groceries so they tend to order lunch and dinner rather than go shopping for groceries.

My team was tasked with utilizing existing assets of Giant Eagle to create a service that will cater towards customers who decide to eat out on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Problem Statement

“How might we leverage Giant Eagle’s current hot food facilities to create a service that meets the needs of customers looking for nutritious meals for their families when they’ve run out of groceries?”

Research

Our team conducted contextual inquiry at 7 separate Giant Eagle locations Pittsburgh. This also included conducing 30+ interviews with customers, employees, and chefs at each location.

We knew simply reading reports wouldn't give us the full picture of Giant Eagle's prepared food offerings. We craved an immersive experience. So, we embarked on a journey across four Giant Eagle locations, from the vibrant streets of Shadyside to the quiet neighborhoods of Wexford. Our mission: observe. We watched how customers navigated the pre-packed and hot food sections, their process reading labels, their shopping habits (what they shopped for first, what came last, why?).

Our Team celebrating our Successful Research at Giant Eagle Market District

We took note of the layout itself - how the prepared food displays interacted with the flow of the store. Were they easily accessible? Did they entice customers? Where were customers gravitating towards?

Selection of  Hot Food Available at Market District Pittsburgh, PA

This hunger for the customer perspective led us down a path of Guerilla research. We struck up conversations with anyone willing to share their insights - shoppers pondering their dinner options, employees with the inside scoop on daily operations, and even the chefs crafting culinary creations behind the scenes. Each chat offered a unique piece of the puzzle - customer preferences, operational challenges, insights into menu development. From social media analysis to on-the-spot customer interactions, we left no stone unturned in our quest to understand the heart of Giant Eagle's prepared food landscape.

Gaurav Conducting Guerilla Research with the Executive Chef in the Hot Food Section

Insights

After collecting valuable interview data from our Guerilla Research and Contextual Research, we synthesized the following insights:

The Majority of Sales from the Hot Food counter at Giant Eagle happen In-store.

The ability for customers to see and smell the food is a huge motivation in purchase. Without either of those, the customer has a difficult time relating to the product. The executive chef at Marketplace in Pittsburgh, PA estimated that 90% of their sales occur from in-store shoppers.

Giant Eagle Serves Each Community Individually by Catering to their Customs.

Communities each have their own unique customs when it comes to food. Giant Eagle does a good job of this by catering their menu to the varying needs of the community they serve. An example of this is Giant Eagle marketplace serving Fish Fry on Fridays during Lent.

Delivery Times Impact the Desirability of Food for Customers who Order Online.

Customers who were interviewed cited this specifically why they prefer to purchase Giant Eagle Hot Food in store as opposed to through delivery apps. They also cited this as part of the distaste to ordering through Food Delivery Services like Uber Eats and Doordash. This would corroborate the fact that 90% of hot food sales occur in store, according to the Executive Chef at Marketplace in Pittsburgh, PA.

Service Blueprint

Before innovating on Giant Eagle’s current business model by implementing our own service, our team needed to their current business model to find areas of opportunity. We accomplished this by developing a Service Blueprint and Value Exchange Model based on Giant Eagle’s Hot Food Counter and Pre-Packaged Meals as well as a task analysis comparing buying food in-store from the Hot Food counter versus on DoorDash.

This Service Blueprint maps out a customer’s current experience at Giant Eagle when ordering Hot Food. It takes into account the Front and Back Stage Interactions currently in place that could be potentially leveraged in a future Service innovation.

Service Blueprint

The Value Exchange Model illustrates an opportunity to enhance both customer engagement metrics such as brand loyalty, advocacy, and time spent interacting with the brand, as well as key business aspects like product awareness, availability, customer experience, and emphasis on the flagship product.

Value Exchange Model

This task analysis compares the process of buying hot food in-store vs buying hot food online. You can see that the process of buying hot food in-store is much shorter and concise than buying it online. Buying food online is supposed to be more convenient for customers, but in its current state there’s lots of actions that need to be completed.

Task Analysis

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Automating the Parachute Pack Process