Building new features to service increased demand with Just Eat for Business
Industry: Food Technology
How we helped: Product Leadership and Coaching, Technology Leadership, Product Delivery
Key Takeaways
Faster development of high-quality features
With embedded engineering best practice
Solving complex logistical and billing challenges
With a new product proposition for enterprise customers
Aligned Product and Technology
To ensure collaboration on delivery of company objectives
About City Pantry (now known as Just Eat for Business)
City Pantry (now known as Just Eat for Business) provides catering services to over 1,000 businesses, safely delivering food to their teams whether they are in the office or at home. The company offers its customers Brazilian, Chinese, Italian, Malaysian, Mexican, and other food products from over 600 top restaurants.
Since working with 101 Ways, City Pantry has been acquired by Just Eat and is now known as Just Eat for Business.
“It was a pivotal time for the company. I found the 101 Ways team very direct and honest. We just clicked right away,”
David Stefan
Director of Engineering, City Pantry
The Challenge
City Pantry was experiencing strong early traction in the UK market. With a small and enthusiastic product development team, the challenge was how to quickly build the new features required to service demand without incurring the kind of technical debt that could slow down future development whilst also building a scalable, resilient and secure platform that could support expansion into other geographies.
In addition, as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, the evolution of hybrid working patterns in large enterprise firms presented significant opportunities to City Pantry if the right service offerings could be developed quickly enough.
“It was a pivotal time for the company, but it was frustrating. We had the funding and ideas in place but didn’t have enough development resources to be able to take on the project. We were a small team so needed to bring in some extra muscle,” comments David Stefan, Director of Engineering, City Pantry.
The Solution
Knowing that he needed to expand his team by 20%, Stefan spoke to several suppliers to help them, from small specialist start-ups to global consultancies, before turning to 101 Ways. “101 Ways was a good balance between the two. I found the team very direct and honest. We just clicked right away,” he said. Stefan set a six-month goal for the project to get the platform up and running. Following an initial consultation period, 101 Ways provided a cross-functional team comprising product, technology and data specialists to provide the muscle that was needed.
“101 Ways hand-picked the best individuals that could support our existing team and improve our capability to drive forward change,”commented Stefan.
Fitting in culturally, the team got to action accelerating product development by building new platform capabilities as well as challenging existing thinking to implement product management, engineering practices and automation required for City Pantry to scale.
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