Pivoting an e-commerce platform for the restaurant industry
KOALA was originally an e-commerce platform helping small businesses sell online. But when introducing a service fee led to roughly 50% seller churn, the business needed to rethink its target market.
The business decided to pivot toward medium-to-large restaurants, where we saw stronger monetization potential and existing demand. F&B is consistently among KOALA’s top three business categories, and there is strong interest from restaurants in our solutions.
BUSINESS GOALS
Expand into the F&B market with a more sustainable monetization opportunity.
ROLE
Founding Product Designer - Product strategy, MVP scoping, UX/UI design
KEY RESULTS
KOALA Menu launched with restaurant-specific ordering, order tracking, and transaction management with 300% against target MAU
The challenge
A new market, different problems
KOALA's original flow was simple: a customer adds products to a cart, checks out, and the product is delivered.
Restaurants work differently. The customer chooses how they will receive the order, and that choice changes what the business needs to know. Owners also need to manage a menu and a stream of incoming orders.
Using existing research, benchmarking and user-flow analysis, I identified three differences that mattered:
Ordering context: Dine-in, pickup, and delivery require different customer information.
Order fulfillment: Customers need to know when their food will be ready, while staff need to manage orders through different stages.
Branding: Established restaurants need an ordering experience that reflects their own identity.
The existing platform gave us a starting point, but its workflows couldn't simply be reused unchanged.
Strategy
Reuse what works. Redesign what doesn't.
With a three-month timeline, building a separate restaurant platform was not practical. I worked with the PM and engineers to define the MVP, balancing restaurant needs against development effort.
The approach was to build on KOALA's existing capabilities and focus new design work on the workflows that had to change, so KOALA could work for restaurants without rebuilding what we already had.
Product scoping
Deciding what to change, and what to leave alone
Three priorities shaped the MVP:
Adapted: checkout by service type. Dine-in asks for a table number, delivery asks for an address, and pickup asks for neither. Each service collects only what the restaurant needs to fulfill the order, instead of one generic form.
Reworked: order tracking. I shifted the post-order experience toward fulfillment status, so customers can see how their order is progressing.
Built on existing capabilities: transaction management. Rather than introducing a separate management system, I adapted KOALA's existing transaction experience for restaurant operations.
Decision: reuse components. I chose to adapt KOALA's existing components to the restaurant flow rather than create new ones. This saved design and engineering time for the parts that were truly different.
Decision: no scheduled orders in the MVP. Scheduled ordering was proposed during scoping. I pushed back because it was not needed for the MVP, which kept the scope on the core ordering flow.
Final design
One product connecting customer orders and restaurant operations.
Ordering that adapts to the service
Customers can browse a restaurant's online menu and place orders for dine-in, pickup, or delivery. Each flow collects the information needed for that service, such as a table number or delivery address.
Order progress at a glance
Instead of emphasizing conventional transaction details, the post-order experience makes fulfillment status more prominent. For MVP, we also don't show delivery maps because of engineering and product costs.
A storefront that feels like the restaurant's own
A more neutral interface allows restaurant branding and menu content to take priority over KOALA's visual identity.
Managing orders across devices
Restaurants can receive and manage transactions through KOALA's existing ecosystem, with order management available on mobile and desktop.
Outcome
We brought KOALA into a new market without rebuilding the platform.
Within three months of release, KOALA Menu reached over 300% of its MAU target. It launched with customer ordering and restaurant transaction management, extending the existing product into the F&B market.
By reusing existing capabilities and focusing development on restaurant-specific workflows, the team delivered the initial product within the three-month project window.
Reflection
What I learned
A new market doesn't always need a new product from scratch.
This project taught me to look beyond what a product already does and question which assumptions still hold for a different audience.
It also reinforced the value of scoping with engineering early. Reusing existing capabilities wasn't just a technical shortcut; it was a way to focus our limited time on the changes that mattered most.