Finding Growth Opportunities (Growth Design Monthly)

April 2021

Dear Readers,Last year, we saw COVID-19 devastate restaurants. And we also saw them get creative, from temporarily converting to grocery stores, feeding essential workers, to trying takeout for the first time. At OpenTable, we've been excited to see how reinvention and resilience have translated to reservation growth this year in cities where caseloads and restrictions have eased.  Good news aside, there may come a time when your sector faces incredible challenges like the restaurant industry. For us, 2020 marked a year of rising to the challenge and rapid learning for ourselves and our customers. As Molly and Lex have mentioned, growth design isn't about riding bull markets and “hacking” to post big user acquisition numbers. Growth design is about retention over fast revenue. Growth design isn't about delighting users, but it is about learning fast and empowering users with the right solutions at the right time.So, come back-of-the-house with us as we walk through how we brought a growth design approach to our new takeout product. Your table awaits,Leslie and BenazOpenTable Design Team

Doggy bags for leftovers after a sumptuous meal was the closest many fine dining restaurants had come to offering takeout and delivery at the beginning of 2020. Restaurants had to quickly adapt as COVID sent rolling lockdowns across cities. At OpenTable, we saw two essential user problems. General managers wanted to offer an affordable and sustainable alternative to in-house dining. And diners wanted safety but they also wanted to support their favorite restaurants. 

Short vs. Long-Term Growth

It became clear we could empower our restaurants by building a low cost takeout app. Why? If we go back to basic principles, we know the key to growth isn’t acquisition. It’s retention. Retention compounds value over time, and it’s cheaper. Plugging a leaky funnel is almost always more valuable than pouring more new users on top. We knew we needed to be fast and smart about retaining our customers with solutions they needed now. OpenTable tasked a product squad that included one product designer, two product managers, and eight engineers. In two months, we launched a completely new takeout product to restaurants that served as a companion to our main operational product line.Soon after the launch, one of the product managers placed an order at his favorite Italian restaurant to try the product in the wild. He felt positive as he walked up to pick up the first order made through the new app. “Yay, we’re helping,” he thought to himself. Unfortunately, the restaurant didn’t know it had received his order. Guess what showed up in the backlog the next day? Better order notifications. Meatballs with a side of product insight must have been on the menu that day.

Scrappy product adoption

When you think of takeout, OpenTable isn't top of mind. Our flagship products are known to diners to book reservations and to restaurants to manage them. But the reality is that app-based delivery giants own both the market and mindshare for takeout. We built this new competitive product. Check. But, how were we going to get diners and restaurants to use it?

Even though people weren’t going to OpenTable for takeout and delivery, we noticed news and social media buzzing with guidance to support local restaurants through ordering directly from their websites. And so, we made a button that restaurants could easily grab and embed on their own websites to drive takeout orders. 

Embeddable buttons for restaurant websites

Hope on the Horizon

As caseloads drop and vaccinations become more available, we’re excited to see restaurants reopen and capacity increases for indoor dining. We believe restaurants will continue to have more diverse offerings in addition to in-person dining. In that way, our growth design project has forever shaped the industry, and us too. 

About the Authors

Leslie Yang is a Director of Product Design overseeing product design for the restaurant side of OpenTable. She's focused on growing design leaders that work at the intersection of user value and business impact.Benaz Irani is a Lead Product Designer, heading up growth design efforts on takeout and operational tools that help our restaurants thrive. She’s based in Melbourne and enjoying summer while the rest of us are freezing (we’re not jealous at all). 

Growth Design Fellows can chat about this month's newsletter topic with the authors Leslie and Benaz. 

• When: Thursday, April 8 at 3:00 pm PST. 

• What: Agenda

• Where: Find out how to join on Fellows premium community pages

OpenTable is hiring

Work with these wonderful authors!OpenTable, Senior Product Designer (Denver or LA) 

👯📈 Friends on your Growth Journey

Readers like you are invited to join a new premium community by GrowthDesigners.co. Build your growth design skills by learning with your peers and experienced growth designers

Join the Growth Designers SlackConnect with growth designers in our Slack channel. Share ideas, discuss challenges and learn from each other. 

Looking for Work? Hiring?

Well have we got some resources for you! Check out our Jobs page and our Growth Design Directory.