Zesti

Elevator Pitch

Billions of dollars are being lost every day as social distancing measures remain in effect. Most restaurants have expressed that they cannot solely survive on takeout or delivery orders. Major staff layoffs and furloughs have already occurred throughout the country and people are struggling to support their families. With almost 10% of the US workforce employed in the restaurant industry, our team knew we had to help. That’s where Zesti comes in.

With Zesti, customers can order MealKits from their favorite local spot and cook live with the chef and friends. In the consumer app they will get a curated page of dishes to cook based on their preferences. MealKits include all necessary easy ingredients for the recipe, along with a live or on-demand video session of how to cook. Our live cooking class is a great interactive way to get expert help on cooking while chatting with friends and having a good time.

To enable this easy to use experience on the customer side, we knew the restaurant app had to be easy to use. So we developed a simple yet thorough app for restaurants. Restaurants can sign up for Zesti and start selling right away. They can choose their own prices, add live sessions, manage pre-recorded sessions, and see orders they need to fulfill. With the live dashboard chefs and owners can host a live session with ease. They are able to see what step each participant is at, give advice through video, and view the chat for any questions. This helps create a strong community bond between restaurant owners and customers.

78% of the restaurants we surveyed said they are looking into creating new revenue streams for their businesses, and Zesti gives them the tools and power to do this. We can't wait to help restaurants with our product to deliver high-quality experiences in these tough times. We truly believe both customers and restaurants will love Zesti.

Inspiration

Restaurants have lost a large portion of their revenue due to the pandemic, and are some of the most important businesses in the economy. With such strict social distancing policies, the restaurant experience will be greatly affected. For in-person dining, restaurants will no longer be able to fit in as many customers as they did pre-COVID. When the pandemic ends there will be a new normal, and in that new normal it seems almost certain that restaurants will not be able to operate at full occupancy. This will have a profound impact on businesses that rely on the in-person dining over delivery and takeout options.

At Zesti, we are lovers of food and entrepreneurs. After seeing that some of our favorite restaurants were closing we knew an important problem needed to be solved. We respect these small business’ hustle and creativity and wanted to craft something for them. In countless engineering classes we were taught to “pivot”, and Zesti will create a tool that will allow them to “pivot” their business in these tough times.

What it does

Our platform Zesti aims to help restaurants replace the revenue streams that they lost because of the virus, provide a virtual experience for customers looking for a different eating experience, and help restaurants sustain their vital role in the economy.

The competition for our platform is services such as Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, MasterClass, and The Table Less Traveled. We believe that our platform will be a valuable addition to the market because it has features that no other platform in the market has. Our platform provides our customers with access to personalized ingredient kits from their favorite restaurants and access to instruction from restaurant chefs. Zesti enables consumers to eat dishes from their favorite restaurants as well as picking up a new skill. Unlike the other food box services Zesti incorporates local restaurants in the equation for same day pickup or delivery.

Consumers will be able to register for a class from any restaurant offering classes. The registration includes a tailored kit of ingredients prepared by the restaurant, and access to a live class with a chef. The live classroom is highly interactive on both the consumer side and the instructor side. The classroom is also highly secure since only users who are registered to the class will be allowed into the class. During the class participants will be able to follow along with the Chef, and notify the chef if they are having trouble. After the class has ended it will automatically become available for users to watch on-demand at any time. This allows restaurants to still sell MealKits with a video, without having to do a live class.

Ten minutes before the class is scheduled to start, the chef can begin the class from their device. Once the chef begins the class participants will get a notification that the class has started. The chef will have their own tailored dashboard where they can see the recipe instructions, the status of how the participants are doing with the current step, a preview of a classroom group chat, and finally a preview of a participant livestream. While the chef is performing each step they will be able to see how the participants are progressing with each respective step. If the chef sees that a lot of customers are having trouble with a specific step then the chef can spend more time on that step. This highly interactive and personal classroom will keep customers coming back, and more importantly give them a valuable cooking education from restaurants in their community.

How we built it

Zesti was built on a technology platform primarily using Amazon Web Services. In order to ensure secure user authentication, we are using Amazon Cognito. Within Cognito, we use Amplify CLI, which allows us to integrate and manage our AWS services, to create a user pool group for consumers and one for the businesses. Additionally, we are utilizing DynamoDB databases in order to store user account information and S3 as a cloud backup for all of our data. Finally, we make use of Amazon Personalize to tailor our recommendation engine.

The frontend of the project will be built using React Native. This will allow us to easily develop for multiple devices for a quicker launch and broader customer reach. When implementing a video conference platform we have to consider the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standards. The ITU has three standards for video conferencing. They are ITU H.320 which is a standard that is a recommendation on what protocol suites to use, ITU H.264 which is the compression algorithm used to achieve highly error-free video streams over a regular IP network, and ITU V.80 which is a standard for video conferencing over POTS (Plain Old Telephone System). It was important for the team to follow industry standards in order to enable widespread adoption and use of the platform.

Challenges we ran into

The team realized that none of us have experience owning or operating a restaurant so figuring out exactly what should and should not be included in our platform was challenging. In order to combat this challenge, we sent a survey out to many businesses in order to get their opinions on specific features and a general willingness for participation.

Next, figuring exactly what our app’s function should be was tricky at first and we had a lot of ideas such as a learning platform or social media platform but did not have a true specialty area. To solve this, we spoke with a mentor in order to really narrow down our idea and have a true vision for what we want our final product to be.

Lastly, creating a script and video that perfectly captured the service that we were trying to provide was a tough challenge. After a lot of tutorials and trial-by-error we were able to use Adobe After Effects and Affinity Designer to create digital assets that we could animate to convey our company.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

There are several accomplishments that we are proud of in this project. The first is the fact that our product helps to tie our communities together. During this pandemic, we have become more isolated through social distancing. This app will help keep close-knit communities together and support local businesses. Since restaurants can serve as the meeting places and backbones of our community - this is an important role for our app to fill.

Further, we are proud that within a week we were able to develop a functional wireframe. This will allow a walkthrough to potential customers both from restaurant owners as well as users. Based on our use of Adobe XD, a link can be placed on any web page to show a preview of our design. Going further, this will also allow for a more seamless construction of the app, as the functionality and flow is completely defined.

Finally, we are proud of the data and connections that we made with restaurant owners and chefs. We envisioned a lean startup for our business. Establishing what our target community wants from our product (and establishing that they want it in the first place) is a key step in a lean business model. The data from our survey allowed us to tailor the product we are presenting to what the restaurant industry most wants in a post-COVID world. Thus, we can make a solution that best suits the need.

What we learned

The team learned a bunch of new skills and programs like AdobeXD, AWS, React, and more. More importantly, we really learned how to create a product that was focused and detailed enough to be viable in the real world. Another thing we learned was balancing the needs of various stakeholders in a product. We had many discussions on what features needed to be prioritized for restaurants and consumers. For example, we knew we had to dedicate a lot of time to developing a great live host experience for chefs, so we made sure it was detailed and as easy to use as possible.

What's next for Zesti

So what is next for Zesti?! The team is currently in the process of surveying restaurant owners across the country to help mold the app to their needs. For Zesti to succeed, businesses need to love how simple and easy it is to offer MealKits and lessons to customers. On the business end, Zesti is planning to partner with local businesses to advertise to customers. This will give free advertisements to both small restaurants that need our help, and will help the adoption of our app. We are also working on videos and documentation to onboard restaurants and prepare them for hosting live classes. We will be a resource to help them produce high-quality experiences. Lastly, on the development side of things the team is looking to build out our platform on both iOS and Android devices.

Built With

Submitted to

COVID HealthHack Phase 2

Created by

As an Engineering Management student, I am extremely passionate about the intersection of business and technology. With Zesti I helped lay the foundation for a design that met the needs of both the consumer and the restaurant owners/chefs. I also helped craft a system that was technically sound, but enjoyable to use through wireframes, and system diagrams. I loved being able to work on something so meaningful that helps our community!

Andrew Yager
As a Computer Science student, I have always been interested in the technology behind products and was able to utilize this passion as a part of the development team. I worked on researching technologies that would provide a technically sound backend for our app, such as AWS and its many services, as well as creating a flowchart to help visualize the backend of our project. Working on this project has been a great experience and furthered my passion for my major.

Vincenzo Susi
It was my primary job to design the login wireframes and conceptualize Zesti's outreach program. I also assisted with design elements found in our video and some of the other application wireframes demonstrating Zesti's functionality. I have always been passionate not only about graphic design, but also the longevity of local eateries that make towns a home. Combining these interests to combat COVID-19 has been such an enjoyable experience!

Gerard Cardinale
With my background in Computer Science and Software Engineering, I was a part of the development team and researched technologies such as AWS that could help the app's backend function properly. I also helped design wireframes to tailor user's recommendations and for restaurant offerings. Working on Zesti has been a great experience and I am glad I could utilize my passion for software development to benefit the team!

Matthew Sirota
Although my Environmental Engineering degree doesn’t lend itself to product or UI/UX design, I have always been passionate about cooking and wanted to help restaurants. For this reason, I spearheaded the survey campaign, reaching out to a couple hundred restaurant owners to get their reaction and recommendations on our plan and design. I also entered the world of UI/UX design by using Adobe XD for the first time to wireframe parts of our app. I hope to further my experience in product design in the future.

Daniel Rosenberger
Computer Engineering Class of 2021. I have a strong interest in product design UI/UX design, and network engineering. During this project I was able to help the team apply design thinking concepts when prototyping our solution for consumers and restaurant owners. I mainly focused on building the prototypes and brainstorming the technical elements of the livestream portion of our product.

Dhru Patel
I worked with my teammates to ensure that our project would be technically sound, helping to come up with the logistics of the programs and technology that we will actually use to create the application. I helped design a flowchart for the back-end of our project and helped articulate the tech that we will use in the project in our video presentation. As a computer science major, this has been a great learning experience for me and I have enjoyed it very much.

Joseph Naiburg
I am a Business & Technology 2020 graduate, with concentrations in Information Systems & Finance from Stevens Institute of Technology. Throughout this project I have been involved with the design side, working primarily on creating the script, video and digital assets required to present our final project. I used tools such as Adobe After Effects and Affinity Designer to create these visuals and animations.

Will Herwig