Case Study 1: Streamlining Recipe Building for Food Tech Company's Meal Kits

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Introduction

Beam Consultants collaborated with a leading Food Tech company based in Europe to address challenges in their meal kit recipe planning process. The company offered subscription-based meal kits, aiming to reduce food wastage, simplify meal preparation, and eliminate the need for grocery shopping. However, their manual recipe building process faced various complexities, leading to prolonged turnaround times, frequent changes in recipes, and difficulties in catering to diverse dietary needs. Beam Consultants stepped in to build a customized recipe builder, streamlining the process and delivering significant improvements.

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Client Background

The Food Tech company specialized in meal kits, serving customers across Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. Their unique selling point was providing pre-portioned ingredients with recipe cards, eliminating food wastage and simplifying meal preparation for their subscribers.

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Challenges

The client's recipe planning process involved multiple Excel sheets, making it time-consuming and prone to errors. The overall recipe planning for a single week required a staggering 12-15 weeks, affecting their ability to introduce new recipes quickly. Key challenges included:

1. Ingredient Availability and Price Changes: Tracking ingredient availability and cost fluctuations in multiple markets added complexity to the planning process.

2. Variety to Dietary Needs: The company aimed to cater to a diverse customer base with varying dietary preferences, necessitating recipe variations for different dietary needs.

3. Nutritional Value Considerations: Ensuring the nutritional value and balanced diet in each meal kit was a priority, but it posed a challenge in terms of manual calculations and adjustments.

 

The Assignment

Beam Consultants was tasked with developing a recipe builder to automate and streamline the recipe planning process. The main challenge lay in creating a solution for an unsolved problem, as most of the client's users were not highly tech-savvy. Additionally, data centralization was lacking, making information retrieval tedious, and the process lacked standardization.

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Approach

Beam Consultants took a systematic approach to develop a user-friendly recipe builder that addressed the client's specific challenges:

1. Comprehensive Requirement Analysis: The team conducted in-depth discussions with the client to understand their workflow, user preferences, and pain points.

2. User-Centric Design: To ensure user-friendliness, the recipe builder was designed with a simple and intuitive interface. Training sessions were conducted to familiarize the client's team with the new tool.

3. Data Centralization: Beam Consultants implemented a centralized database that consolidated ingredient data, dietary requirements, and nutritional information. This allowed for easy access and streamlined decision-making.

4. Customized Algorithm: An algorithm was developed to efficiently suggest ingredient alternatives in case of unavailability or price fluctuations, reducing manual effort and errors.

 

Results and Benefits

The implementation of the recipe builder by Beam Consultants brought significant improvements to the client's meal kit recipe planning process:

1. Reduced Turnaround Time: The recipe planning time was streamlined to under 9 weeks, a remarkable improvement from the previous 12-15 weeks, enabling quicker product launches and increased agility.

2. Reduced Recipe Changes: Recipe variations were reduced by 20%, as the new system improved accuracy and reduced the need for last-minute adjustments.

3. User-Friendly Solution: The user-centric design of the recipe builder made it accessible to all team members, regardless of their technical expertise.

4. Improved Dietary Customization: The centralized database allowed the client to cater to diverse dietary needs more efficiently, enhancing customer satisfaction.

 

Conclusion

By developing a user-friendly and efficient recipe builder, Beam Consultants successfully tackled the challenges faced by the Food Tech company in their meal kit recipe planning process. The implementation resulted in significant time savings, reduced recipe changes, and enhanced dietary customization capabilities. This successful collaboration allowed the client to improve their overall product offering, better serve their customers, and reinforce their position as a leader in the Food Tech industry across Europe.