Helping parents with young children improve the quality of the meals they feed their family

Client: Tesco

Year: 2018

Role: Project lead and consultancy side project manager

Key activies: : Interviews, diaries, shadowing in store, synthesis, journey mapping, Ideation workshops, concept development, strategy ,

Core team: Me, Livework mid-level Service Designer, Tesco Agile delivery manager

 
 

Context

Tesco is the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Yet, the perception of the quality of their food tend to be behind other competitors, even if their products when blind-tasted tend to score very high.

Tesco asked Livework to identify how to increase quality perception and association with high quality products by democratising home cooking and healthier meals.

£103 millions increase in sales

for every 1% improvement Tesco in quality perceptions.

Parents with kids aged 2 to 10

as this segment scored particularly low when it comes to quality perception at Tesco. 

 
 

Phase 1 - Discovery

 

A mixed research approach to understand barriers, drivers and behaviours
around how UK families plan, buy and cook their meals

12 home Interviews

to understand parent’s realities, attitude, challenges, their met and unmet needs.

7 day digital diaries

to gain insights into what everyday meal and shopping patterns actually look like

Shadowing in-store
and at home

to dive into decision making processes in the moment.

 

Key insights

We identified a value-action gap between what parents aspire to do and their realities.

Parents’ everyday cooking is about spontaneous assembling of simple and everyday ingredients. They don’t need more recipes that look like a big project to approach. Tesco defaulted to providing inspiration in the form of recipes.

  1. Aspiration: Providing healthy, guilt-free meals
    Reality: Giving in and feeling guilty

  2. Aspiration: Cook inspirational and varied meals
    Reality: Everyday cooking is simple and routine

  3. Aspiration: Providing for everybody with minimal effort
    Reality: Having to cater to everybody’s different tastes

  4. Aspiration: Savvy with time and money
    Reality: Too busy to get organised

  5. Aspiration: Inspiration and brain space to do more
    Reality: Minimal or informal planning

  6. Aspiration: Trying something new without risk
    Reality: Sticking to what works

 

Let’s zoom into one insight area

Aspiration: Cook inspirational and varied meals
Reality: Everyday cooking is simple and routine

Everyday cooking is mostly assembling ingredients

Parents’ everyday cooking is mostly heating up and assembling simple and everyday ingredients. Most parents don’t follow “recipies”, especially not on week evenings.

Parents don't need more recipes that look like a big project to approach. They want to keep effort and waste low, and not have to buy a lot of ingredients that won’t be used again. They like their cooking books for inspiration, but rarely use them. 

I need to be able to put meals together without having to follow a recipe, so that it fits into my way of cooking and I don’t waste time figuring things out.

I need to be able to make meals that are low effort but still make me feel as if I made something nice, so that I feel I’m doing my best as a parent. 

I need to cook meals with commonly used ingredients, so that I can easily find them and don't have to buy something I'll only use once.

Everyday cooking is routine

Many families rotate the same 5-10 meals. It’s easier for parents to stick to meals they know their kids will eat, rather than trying something new that they might not like.

Most parents want to keep food interesting but most stop trying and accept that their meals will stay bland until their children grow up.

I need to ‘perk up’ everyday meals, so that we enjoy our food more and don't get bored. 

I need to please the entire family with one meal, so that I don't spend too much time cooking.

Everyday cooking can only require little time and brain space

Parents default to their routine way of approaching meal planning, shopping and cooking. They have little time, energy or brain space to consider doing things differently. 

I need to be given meal ideas at the right point, when I’m deciding what to make, so that I can incorporate the ingredients into my shop.

 

Research communication artefacts

We identified more than 50 user needs, each of them were attached to key insights, user groups, journey stages and existing Tesco solutions.

 

User groups, based on planning, shopping and patterns

 

User journey

 

Phase 2 - Socializing, prioritising and ideating with relevant teams through series of workshops

 

User needs prioritisation workshop

🔍 Fostered shared understanding of user needs

🧮 Assessed how existing propositions currently meet user needs

📡 Prioritized teams to engage to create a user needs driven Food Quality perception delivery roadmap

 
 

Mapping and opportunities workshops

(x6 propositions teams)

🗺️ Socialised journey mapping methodologies

🧩 Unpacked most relevant user needs for each team

⚙️ Mapped operations and current enablers

📍Identified opportunities throughout user journey

 
 

Ideation workshops

(x6 propositions teams)

💡 Moved from early ideas into concepts

🎯 Prioritized and scoped improvements that teams would undertake on their own vs those requiring to go through central planning and funding

 
 

Phase 3 - Consolidated overarching strategy and scoped operational requirements

Evolved content strategy

Move from aspirational recipes and to real life dishes that people will actually make

  • Lower perceived barriers to entry, less than 6 ingredients, easy to find and reuse ingredients, less than 5 preparation steps without nested steps

  • Recipes that make parent’s lives easier (see users needs)

New formats: inspiration beyond recipes

Inspiration to do more and try new things, without falling back into a traditional recipes model that come across as too much efforts.

• Ingredients and product associations

• Small additions or helpful swaps

• Cooking techniques

Inspiration where decision happen, leveraging content in-store

Through existing

• Counters - provide inspiration for counter colleagues to share inspiration with customers and encourage them

• Meal buddling - need state-based meal packs and mix and match bundling

New curated inspiration via effective placement

Establishing operational requirements to deliver on strategy

Omnichannel content strategy and management

  • Consolidation of content development efforts

  • A shared Content Management system meeting each channel requirements and information architecture

  • Content readiness across channels requirements for content creation partners, aligned to CMS

Shared positioning

  • A shared position on food: an everyday life-proof food, more practical than aspirational, encouraging customers to make the most of products, so they connect great tasting food to products, not just to recipes.

  • Shared taxonomy for Tesco recipes and what makes them relevant across user groups