McEwan Catering 1.0

The logistics of prepared catering and food operations are complex. Launched just before the COVID-19 pandemic, this brought additional challenges that necessitated a platform that could quickly adjust to the business's needs, provide the back-office tools required by the catering team to ensure a seamless end-to-end customer experience, and establish a production operation that would ensure a level of quality that the McEwan brand is known for.

The COVID-19 pandemic put additional pressure and demands on the food industry to deliver. Due to its scalability and ease of use, the McEwan Catering platform was able to meet such demands. However, for some in the catering industry, this demand for online catering services may have waned as the industry began to open up post-pandemic. The platform, however, has continued to grow its audience and business, making it a cornerstone of the McEwan Group of companies.

Launched just before the pandemic, McEwan Catering needed a platform to cater to their needs as they expanded into an online catering service. This was a unique and challenging opportunity.

This is unique because few established companies in this space owned an end-to-end solution, as many leveraged existing platforms, such as Doordash, Uber Eats, etc., for delivery and outsourced food preparation services.

This was challenging because, at the time, there was no well-established pattern to adopt, and more established services such as Doordash and Uber Eats had already figured out the logistics of it all.

The catering industry in Canada has a market size of roughly $3.1bn; the province of Ontario alone handles $1.6bn worth of business. McEwan Catering faced an opportunity to shoulder the risk, own the entire process, gain financial rewards, or leave money on the table by working with established food delivery services.

Today, the McEwan Catering platform has solved most of the logistical issues of running an order management platform. McEwan Catering owns the entire process. It can handle all aspects of an order's lifecycle with very little dependence on third parties.

Some key features:

• Customized administrative features tailored to the nuances of the order management process involved in an order's lifecycle reduce any friction the catering staff may have faced in day-to-day operations.
• Integrations with payment providers, marketing tools, delivery platforms and other food vendors.
• A complex but user-friendly product menu allows the end-user to customize a variety of food combinations. This menu is built based on a flexible menu management system that facilitates business rules and menu restrictions.
• Easy in-store pickup and delivery during the checkout process, users can easily select pickup and delivery locations and time slots for their convenience.
• Food production management tools were developed to ease communication with the production staff and manage inventory.
• Custom reports that detail past and current food orders, inventory, financial reports, etc., are available for any period and on demand.

Leading a two-person development team, including myself and the experienced LimaBean, we transformed the marketing agency's creative work and built a fully functional solution. However, we went beyond this and worked closely with the critical stakeholders at McEwan Catering to learn more about the teams' day-to-day operations and needs. We gained a deeper understanding of their customers to enhance and implement UX flows that catered to the experience further.

As the technical lead, special attention was paid to the infrastructure to leverage tools and services to provide a secure and scalable solution.

Now 5 years old, though the platform has worked well for the McEwan Group, allowing the business to grow exponentially within this period. It is time to build on this solid foundation and expand the platform further; McEwan Catering 2.0 is coming soon!