Bringing a new venue onto me&u is exciting, but comes with some setup hurdles. Alongside training and logistics, crafting the perfect digital menu takes serious time. Ideally, this would be a streamlined, self-service process for our merchants. However, with our current system, our content team spends valuable hours on manual data entry.
The crux of the issue is simple: all the necessary menu data exists within a merchant's point-of-sale system. Unfortunately, there's no way to directly import this information into me&u. This not only creates a huge workload for our team but also increases the potential for errors, introducing an undesirable risk.
So, I started analyzing various menu exports from multiple point-of-sale systems, covering everything from independent locations to large restaurant groups. After reviewing these with our CTO and Integrations Tech Lead, a potential solution emerged. We could sidestep the issue of POS-specific formats by building a layer of abstraction. Essentially, we'd translate those varied data structures into a form compatible with our own system, enabling automatic menu creation.
First things first, we needed a good, hard look at our own data model. This would be our roadmap for identifying which point-of-sale integrations were ready for a quick win, and which would be real headaches. We cross-referenced this with a breakdown of merchants on each system, especially those holding out on using me&u until this problem was solved. This let us prioritize systems that were both technically possible and would have the most significant business impact.
After careful analysis, we realised a rapid MVP approach was best. While not ideal, it would immediately alleviate some pressure. By allowing direct CSV uploads, we shifted some of the data transformation work onto merchants. This provided a noticeable improvement over manual entry processes, particularly for multi-site venues. However, we acknowledged this interim solution was still labor-intensive and we continued work towards a more elegant, long-term fix.
After shipping the MVP, we wrapped up our initial findings and handed the remaining build-out to the Venue Operations squad. From then on, I was more of a consultant, advising their lead designer on the front-end experience — while I tackled the nitty-gritty of that abstraction layer and overall UX.
