Konchef
Entrepreneurship, Business Design
2018-2020
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THE CHALLENGE
Help busy people prioritize cooking healthy food with less time and effort and make the process seamless and enjoyable.
THE OUTCOME
Konchef: an affordable meal kit service that delivers fresh ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes for people who want to enjoy a healthy and mindful cooking experience.
IMPACT
“I’m enjoying cooking!” shared Cynthia, a working mom and one of Konchef’s early adopters. “Eliminating major painful parts from the cooking process like the grocery shopping and ingredient preparations saved me time, energy, and lots of food that could have been wasted!”
Our concept attracted two rounds of seed funding and mentoring from UK Lebanon Tech Hub and Flat6labs. Regrettably, we were forced to drop out of the market in early 2020 due to Lebanon’s calamitous economic crisis.
THE PROCESS
It all started when I was tinkering with some engineers in a 3D workshop in 2017. As we watched out designs print out, we realized how late it had gotten and lamented that we wouldn’t be able to cook our own meal that night – after all, we loved to cook, but it was just too late and we couldn’t manage it in our busy schedules! A few months later, the workshop facilitator invited me to co-found Konchef.’
Discovery
Over several weeks, we hung out with more than 50 individuals to discover their relationship with food, lifestyle, and food preparation experience. We walked into a grocery shop and took a taxi home to prepare meals. We talked about the frustration when cleaning a pile of dishes after cooking.
Mapping user interviews debrief to identify themes and patterns.
With insights in hand, we identified key personas. Next, we traced their journeys across channels to identify pains and goals. Finally, we identified key stakeholders and mapped their influence on the experience to better shape an inclusive value proposition and, eventually, a well-thought offering.
Mapping user interviews debrief to identify themes and patterns.
We developed key personas: working mother, student living alone, housewife, new couples, single employee, and athlete.
Mapping and understanding user interview debriefings to identify themes and patterns.
Ideation and prototyping
We reframed our findings into How-Might-We’s to come up with ideas and experiment with techniques like SCAMPER to test these ideas into reality.
Within a month, we launched our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test our service with real users:
- A box of fresh ready-to-cook ingredients (washed, chopped) with easy to follow recipes,
- A website that users can explore and order daily, weekly, or monthly meal boxes.
Meanwhile, we explored packaging options, food suppliers, and delivery logistics in the backend.
Mapping user interviews debrief to identify themes and patterns.
Testing, improving and learning
We had lots of observations and conversations to improve our service along the way. In addition, user feedback helped us design around the sustainability of the offering in terms of order frequency, meal size, and packaging.
Konchef taught me that designing a business is never a step-by-step process. Things can get really messy, with many ups and downs. However, continuous focus on people is at the heart of business prosperity.
Despite the long hours and stress, I had so much fun and even got better at working with numbers! I had wise mentors and got much closer to human-centered design.
With Roland, the co-founder 🙂
