Our journey was split in two phases - ideation and validation, aiming to provide the ideal environment to test new ideas and bold solutions. The purpose of our ideation phase was to gain a richer understanding of the customer, identifying opportunities that champion access to delicious, good value, feel-good food. We needed to understand what customers wanted, needed, liked and disliked, and how we could differentiate our partner from their competitors to deliver what would be the food service offer of the future. Over 12 weeks, working in tandem with market research experts, we implemented a user-centric approach to collate data and insights through competitor safari trips, focus groups, food tasting sessions and our purpose-built food truck.  

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With an enormous amount of insight, we needed to build an innovation testing hub with a modular format to execute convenient iteration testing and growth hacking experiments to obtain a comprehensive feel of how customers really react - bridging the say/do gap. Enter our validation phase, were we build "The Cafe" in the Bluewater Shopping Centre to confirm customer interest and validate the willingness to pay for the proposition. Unlike in other phases and development methods, the pop-up activity allowed for collection of real-world richness of insights – by experimenting live.