Chewse
Modern Offices' Meals
We professionalized Chewse's development lifecycle and software maturity, focusing on UX Design to promote healthy meals in US offices.
Mission
Chewse is a San Francisco-based venture created to ease companies in providing quality food for their employees. The company, now acquired by the Foodee company, connects companies with restaurants to organize office catered meals.
Impact
They have a measurable impact through their expansion through several major US and Canadian cities. Besides, they create and encourage high-level connections between involved parties. Furthermore, Chewse works with charity entities to donate food from their meal services.
Services
The client requested us to use Vue.JS, a lightweight and fast JavaScript framework. While Capicua’s main frameworks have been Angular and React, we quickly adapted to Vue.JS’ structure.
Goal
Chewse’s primary goal is to provide a space for modern offices to plan their meals. Furthermore, the venture is an expert in individual meals and intelligent packaging. Due to recent conjuncture, they added contactless delivery.
Story
The company was created in 2011 by Jon Cartwright and Ryan Spong. They realized there was an asymmetric relation between desk lunches at offices and restaurants in those zones. Moreover, they noted often restaurants closed due to a lack of customers, while office employees mostly ate unhealthy fast-food lunches.
After this information, Chewse’s founders merged these issues. As a result, it meant promoting local gastronomy and providing healthy food for offices. Nowadays, Chewse has delivered over 10M office catering meals. What’s more, it provides services in over ten major cities across the US and Canada —aiming to grow.
Challenges
While Chewse had its development crew, it did not have a design team. So, the venture scoped to Capicua to extend its capabilities. Also, it assured it an ongoing contractor. Our first job was to design and develop the front-end of its internal app for menu building. Since then, we have worked on several more projects. For instance, an on-site Design Sprint, a menu builder, and a VUE front-end.
Worth Mentioning
Our team professionalized their dev lifecycles and software maturity. Also, we prepared the company for a successful acquisition just before COVID-19 hit. Chewse was using third-party software for their operations. Since that method implied extra work for many tasks, we provided custom tools to automate their processes.
Procedure
Chewse‘s networking strategy has a list of steps. Once they connect with a new provider, they have to input all of their menu items into the system. Each item has special distinctions that need to be tracked. These include potential allergens, styles of cuisine, and types of meals. This comes as extremely important when tracking dietary requirements, both on health issues and lifestyle choices, to achieve customers’ safety.
That’s why we placed several validation points into the app: to make sure items were appropriate for each menu. Within this same strategy, we integrate the menu app’s logic with menu scheduling. In order to develop a more efficient process, we created a tool that allows Chewse to upload menu items in CSV format. Not only does it simplify an exhausting task, but it also improved communications between the company, the restaurants, and final users.
Technology
Our team professionalized their dev lifecycles and software maturity. We prepared the company for a successful acquisition. While Chewse was using third-party software for its operations, we automated its processes with customized tools.
The client requested an extra app for their processes automatization. Also, they wanted their custom-built app to match the brand’s look and feel. That’s why our UX Design team met with them in San Francisco. We worked alongside its team in an intensive Design Sprint on our trip.
Regarding dev, we combined Vue.JS for the front-end with DJANGO on the back-end. Also, we worked with PostgreSQL’s database. In addition, we used Vuetify -a library with a basis on Material UI- for UI stylings. This tech stack allowed us to achieve a consistent and recognizable style for its apps.
Strategy
Chewse‘s networking strategy has a list of steps. Once it connects with a new provider, it must input all its menu items into the system. Each item has unique distinctions that need a follow-up. These include potential allergens, styles of cuisine, and types of meals. The named particularities are relevant when tracking dietary requirements. Those apply to both health issues and lifestyle choices.
That’s why we placed several validation points into the app: to make sure items were appropriate for each menu. Within this same strategy, we integrate the menu app’s logic with menu scheduling. To develop a more efficient process, we created a tool that allows Chewse to upload menu items in CSV format. It simplifies an exhausting task and improves communications between the company, the restaurants, and final users.
Testimony
"They’re incredible to work with. Their communication is excellent, and they’ve met us a couple of times. They’re heavily involved and make themselves part of our team." — Kash Mathur - Chewse's COO
