Me&u

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

Me&u is a hospitality platform for QR code at-table ordering. 73% of Australians (aged 18-60) ordered through it last year.

Custom permissions were restaurants' top feature request, and a blocker to landing enterprise customers. We ran research with waitstaff and head office teams that surfaced the need for a tailored experience, letting staff focus on what mattered during service.

Role

Turned the ambiguous problem of custom permissions into a simple, waitstaff-first vision that led to a new dedicated team and unlocked a new payment system through Apple's Tap to Pay.

Me&u

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

Me&u is a hospitality platform for QR code at-table ordering. 73% of Australians (aged 18-60) ordered through it last year.

Custom permissions were restaurants' top feature request, and a blocker to landing enterprise customers. We ran research with waitstaff and head office teams that surfaced the need for a tailored experience, letting staff focus on what mattered during service.

Role

Turned the ambiguous problem of custom permissions into a simple, waitstaff-first vision that led to a new dedicated team and unlocked a new payment system through Apple's Tap to Pay.

Me&u

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

Me&u is a hospitality platform for QR code at-table ordering. 73% of Australians (aged 18-60) ordered through it last year.

Custom permissions were restaurants' top feature request, and a blocker to landing enterprise customers. We ran research with waitstaff and head office teams that surfaced the need for a tailored experience, letting staff focus on what mattered during service.

Role

Turned the ambiguous problem of custom permissions into a simple, waitstaff-first vision that led to a new dedicated team and unlocked a new payment system through Apple's Tap to Pay.

The previous experience was difficult and overwhelming, especially for waitstaff who juggle multiple things at once while serving customers.

“If I am panicked and we're in the heat of it where there's like hundreds of people here... at the moment I get lost”

Restaurant manager

Data showed a large percentage of waitstaff were using their phones to quickly make updates like sold out items.

We were also hearing consistently how waitstaff were overwhelmed by the amount of iPad’s they had to manage.

Our first focus was to improve item availability, one of the most frequent tasks waitstaff use during service. The current experience was unintuitive and scored low in our usability baseline study.

Waitstaff kept telling us they couldn't monitor alcohol intake.

Guests ordered from their phones, so servers couldn't keep up with how much customers were drinking. Venues wanted the ability to turn off ordering for a table. Apple had just released Tap to Pay, and it made that possible.

That led to Crew, a new app built to empower waitstaff. Crew gave them the ability to take orders, upsell customers, and manage wait times and tables without rushing back to the POS.

New team formed

Focused on building a native mobile app for waitstaff to tackle the pain points identified.

New team formed

Focused on building a native mobile app for waitstaff to tackle the pain points identified.

Over 100 venues requested early access.

Beta launched in Oct 2023.

Over 100 venues requested early access.

Beta launched in Oct 2023.

Over 100k in total revenue the first month.

Through the release of Tap to Pay.

Over 100k in total revenue the first month.

Through the release of Tap to Pay.