Vital Ingredient is a UK company operating a 20-store chain of made-to-order salad and soup bars in London. Growing rapidly, each venue serves long queues of city workers every morning and lunchtime.

Challenge

Before March 2017, Vital Ingredient had its own purpose-built online ordering platform. The service was popular with customers and it was that popularity which demonstrated to the brand that the time was right to launch a complementary mobile app and ordering service.

Recognising that ordering services like Deliveroo are increasingly popular, especially with busy, digitally-minded workers, Vital Ingredient knew it was important to offer online ordering. However, a strong part of the company’s brand is that the customer sees the food made fresh in front of them. It therefore needed a solution to help it stay at the front of technology trends, appealing to the mobile generation, without alienating traditional customers.

All of Vital Ingredient’s customers needed to know that they are equally welcome in-store and online.

Solution

A natural concern was that mobile ordering should integrate fully with the existing online system. Vital Ingredient therefore discontinued its existing online platform in order to launch an online and mobile ordering system managed as a single platform.  It additionally wanted to allow for the collecting, viewing and spending of loyalty points, as well as giving access to nutritional information and menus.

Without the in-house expertise to build such a multi-layered platform, Vital Ingredient investigated external providers. It chose Pepper to build a core app and, shortly after, Preoday to create and manage the integration of its new online and mobile ordering function.  

Prior to launch, Preoday worked closely with Vital Ingredient and Pepper to align the ordering platform’s operations with the company’s strong, healthy brand. This included connecting the ordering solution with its existing epos system managed by IBS and delivery company, On the Dot. Needless to say since the launch, feedback has been very positive with customers particularly impressed by the range of integrated features.

Results

Since the March launch, Vital Ingredient has seen the number of digital orders processed on the platform increase week on week (in July nearly 1700 orders were taken across 19 stores). It has also enjoyed significant growth in users when compared to the original online platform. Queues are noticeably shorter than before which has opened up space for new in-store customers that might previously have been turned off by queue sizes.

Data collected from the platform also reveals that Vital Ingredient’s average online basket size is larger than in-store. Analysis shows this is due to a propensity for customers to order extra items, drinks or snacks, when ordering online.

With online and mobile ordering a proven success with consumers,Vital Ingredient has already started to expand the service, a recent update included the integration with the Vital Ingredient wallet. A next step to consider might be an expansion of the online ordering service to include delivery into a corporate environment.

In their words

“As the most of our customers are London office workers the lunch period is always very busy. Knowing that queues can be a big turn-off for walk-by customers, we planned to reduce queues in-store by offering a pre-order, pre-pay option. Preoday offered exactly what we needed: a white-label, online ordering platform which seamlessly integrated with our App and EPOS system.

“We’ve been impressed with the efficiency of the Preoday team, they are always keen to resolve issues fast and were very helpful and open-minded during the initial setup process.”

– Paolo Perretti, Managing Director, Vital Ingredient

Vital Ingredient is a UK company operating a 20-store chain of made-to-order salad and soup bars in London. Growing rapidly, each venue serves long queues of city workers every morning and lunchtime.

Challenge

Before March 2017, Vital Ingredient had its own purpose-built online ordering platform. The service was popular with customers and it was that popularity which demonstrated to the brand that the time was right to launch a complementary mobile app and ordering service.

Recognising that ordering services like Deliveroo are increasingly popular, especially with busy, digitally-minded workers, Vital Ingredient knew it was important to offer online ordering. However, a strong part of the company’s brand is that the customer sees the food made fresh in front of them. It therefore needed a solution to help it stay at the front of technology trends, appealing to the mobile generation, without alienating traditional customers.

All of Vital Ingredient’s customers needed to know that they are equally welcome in-store and online.

Solution

A natural concern was that mobile ordering should integrate fully with the existing online system. Vital Ingredient therefore discontinued its existing online platform in order to launch an online and mobile ordering system managed as a single platform.  It additionally wanted to allow for the collecting, viewing and spending of loyalty points, as well as giving access to nutritional information and menus.

Without the in-house expertise to build such a multi-layered platform, Vital Ingredient investigated external providers. It chose Pepper to build a core app and, shortly after, Preoday to create and manage the integration of its new online and mobile ordering function.  

Prior to launch, Preoday worked closely with Vital Ingredient and Pepper to align the ordering platform’s operations with the company’s strong, healthy brand. This included connecting the ordering solution with its existing epos system managed by IBS and delivery company, On the Dot. Needless to say since the launch, feedback has been very positive with customers particularly impressed by the range of integrated features.

Results

Since the March launch, Vital Ingredient has seen the number of digital orders processed on the platform increase week on week (in July nearly 1700 orders were taken across 19 stores). It has also enjoyed significant growth in users when compared to the original online platform. Queues are noticeably shorter than before which has opened up space for new in-store customers that might previously have been turned off by queue sizes.

Data collected from the platform also reveals that Vital Ingredient’s average online basket size is larger than in-store. Analysis shows this is due to a propensity for customers to order extra items, drinks or snacks, when ordering online.

With online and mobile ordering a proven success with consumers,Vital Ingredient has already started to expand the service, a recent update included the integration with the Vital Ingredient wallet. A next step to consider might be an expansion of the online ordering service to include delivery into a corporate environment.

In their words

“As the most of our customers are London office workers the lunch period is always very busy. Knowing that queues can be a big turn-off for walk-by customers, we planned to reduce queues in-store by offering a pre-order, pre-pay option. Preoday offered exactly what we needed: a white-label, online ordering platform which seamlessly integrated with our App and EPOS system.

“We’ve been impressed with the efficiency of the Preoday team, they are always keen to resolve issues fast and were very helpful and open-minded during the initial setup process.”

– Paolo Perretti, Managing Director, Vital Ingredient