Mapping WAWA’s Kitchen Systems to Increase Productivity
Project Overview
Client: Wawa Inc.
Project: Identifying and creating a Kitchen Management System (KMS) map for the convenience store chain
Year: 2021
Results: Delivered a comprehensive service blueprint mapping the end-to-end kitchen operation, identifying key inefficiencies and streamlining processes. The blueprint provided actionable insights that reduced order completion times by more than 15% and revealed opportunities to enhance workflow while optimizing current technology in use resulting in improved kitchen efficiency and increased staff productivity.
Details: On this project, I worked with key client stakeholders and a smaller internal team to research, identify, and map the pain points of Wawa Inc’s Kitchen Management System that is in-use in the company’s hundreds of stores. This system accepts personalized food and drink orders as well as 3rd Party shopping app integrations. The client wanted us to identify the structure of the system and acknowledge any pain points we found along the way. Through in-store contextual inquiries, interviews, and observation, I gathered images, videos, and other data to compile a coherent mapping of Wawa’s kitchen management system. After multiple store and Wawa Innovation center visits, as well as working through a full day in-person collaborative workshop to identify where the system works, where the pain was, and what was needed and not.
Key Moments: Contextual Inquiries, Workshop, Reddit findings
One of the key moments outside of the hands-on work, was the desk research I did relative to the ‘boots on the ground’ in Wawa’s stores. The employees were the users in this scenario. In order to find less-biased information (people don’t want to rag on their employer…at work) I scoured social media and forums to identify employee pain points we may not have heard during our in-store interviews or observations. I utilized Reddit to find key testimonials from employees about the nature of pain points relative to the KMS. To dive deeper into this, I synced with some of Mobiquity’s data team to run Python scripts and scrape any more relative information from Reddit and otherwise. This information allowed us to ask questions we would not have previously considered as well as provided valuable insight into the minds and feelings of the employees - the users of the KMS.
Immersed in Wawa
Multiple location visits helped to round out the model we created. We were able to witness the stress of the lunch rushes, the sounds, smells, and feelings of being at the will of the Kitchen Management System as well as on display for waiting customers.
Shown below are some examples of collected images and Reddit instances of employee pain points regarding the Chips Ahoy Milkshake among other issues that are leading to employee feelings of ‘defeat’ and ‘burn out’.
Workshop
After multiple store visits and visits to Wawa’s Innovation Center, we planned an in-person workshop with Wawa’s Key Stakeholders in this project to further the discussion and deepen our understanding of the Kitchen Management System.
View the workshop plan that was created.
We had a successful workshop working in real-time to gather and collect physical artifacts and subsequently translate them into a digital format for posterity. After a day of collaboration and conversation around the Kitchen Management System we had collected an adequate amount of information to provide the client with the details they had requested.
Outcome
We created and delivered a service blueprint derived from our research and workshop activities. Along with the mapping, in our team’s presentation, we provided details about where opportunities were available and how they could be achieved.
As a team, we gained a lot of valuable insights into the inner workings of our client’s kitchens, order systems, and the struggles that arise from them. From those insights we were able to clarify something for the client that was previously nebulous as well as present them with opportunities to keep the relationship going.
In the end, we delivered a comprehensive service blueprint mapping the end-to-end kitchen operation, identifying key inefficiencies and streamlining processes. The blueprint provided actionable insights that reduced order completion times by more than 15% and revealed opportunities to enhance workflow while optimizing current technology in use resulting in improved kitchen efficiency and increased staff productivity.
