Green Chef · Order Management, Reimagined

TLDR;

Overview

Green Chef is a meal-kit delivery service where customers order a box of meals each week. Previously, if users didn't like a week's meals or were out of town, their only option was to skip the order entirely. I designed a new set of account-management features that solve for this with easy planning, scheduling, and delivery options.

I owned the redesign end to end, from understanding why customers skip to shaping features that give them the flexibility to stay subscribed, directly protecting Green Chef's ship rate.

Scope

Order-management redesign for Green Chef

My role

Lead designer: research, prototyping, visual design & usability testing

Team

Me (design), 1 PM, 3 engineers, 1 writer

Impact

~10% lift in ship rate (existing users)

Setting context

What is a meal-kit delivery service?

Meal-kit services like Green Chef are subscription-based: they send customers pre-measured, pre-prepped ingredients, sauces, and a step-by-step recipe card to cook fresh meals at home. Customers pick from a range of meal plans and get a box delivered to their door — saving them the weekly hassle of grocery shopping and meal planning.

A Green Chef meal kit: recipe card, fresh ingredients, and portioned sauces laid out

The problem

Why do users skip?

We ran 30+ customer calls, partnered with support to study tickets, and sent out surveys to understand what makes customers skip.

Reason 01

Changing meal preference

The biggest driver: people skip a week when they don't like that week's recipes.

Reason 02

Changing delivery day

"Change delivery day for one week" appeared in 26.6K support tickets.

Reason 03

Changing delivery address

"Change address for one week" appeared in nearly 10K support tickets.

Reason 04

Changing box quantity

Customers wanted to add an extra box for a week — for guests or family — then revert.

"I don't like salmon/potato. I usually skip the week you've got salmon or potato in your recipes."

Green Chef customer · research call

The through-line: users need the flexibility to modify their orders. The original design didn't allow a one-time change of menu — the only way was to change the meal plan at the subscription level, which affected every future week. That limited flexibility during planning and scheduling forced people to skip weeks, cancel, or bounce to a competing meal kit.

The design solution

From "skip" to "modify"

It became clear that with no flexibility, users skip. There was a need to let users edit and modify different aspects of their weekly orders instead.

Proposed order journey with a modify-order option

Solution

Order management, reimagined

Upcoming order view with recipes for the week

Order something else — meal-plan discovery

Modify order — one-time changes to a single week

Skip order — surfaces alternate menus first

Solution

Responsive design

Green Chef's experience has been primarily desktop-first — engagement is higher there, per both quantitative and qualitative data. I designed the desktop UX first, then translated the flows to mobile web on a responsive strategy once the solution was clear.

Impact

Initial results

The project began running experiments in late November 2017.

~10%

increase in ship rate for existing users

5.5%

of users modify orders

60%

of modifiers change the menu

35%

of modifiers change the delivery day

Over the following months we continued to measure impact, iterate, and improve the experience based on user feedback and data — validating that giving customers lightweight, one-time flexibility keeps them shipping instead of skipping.