Dining in the time of COVID-19

Research with diners across the U.S.

Objective

Understand consumer behavior that’s happening now and identify trends that will stick.

• Uncover unmet needs and understand how they could be met in the future

• Portray the consumer dining experience in 2020

• Provide insight and foresight to restaurant operators (Gordon Food Service’s main customer) as they plan for the future and evolve their business models

• Provide Gordon Food Service with insight into the new world our customers (restaurant operators) will face; inform the long-term opportunities for Relish Works

Diner: A person that eats in a restaurant or from a restaurant.

Methodology Overview

Generative Research: 90-minute individual interviews with 8 diners across 6 states

Online Diaries: 20 dscout diaries over 3 weeks across 13 states, split by age range and household income

Methodology in Detail

Generative Research

Exploration of current motivations with in-depth interviews. Learn why participants want to dine out or not and how have they adapted.

My role

1. Plan and execute recruitment: Friends and family across the U.S.
2. Plan and execute the research
3. Create research materials

• The research guide,

• Interview activity,

• Debrief documents  

• A “snapshot” bio of each participant (Miro software)

4. During the research, I moderate interviews and transcribe notes as part of team collaboration.
5. After our conversation with diners, remote analysis in Miro to translate research into opportunities and insights (team collaboration)

Online Diaries

Exploration of current behaviors over 3 weeks. Understand what diners are doing when going out, what has changed for them and what are they worried about. Learn what they’re doing, why, in the moment and over time. Ex: Reasons for choosing a particular restaurant. What are things they notice in a restaurant, comfort levels when dining indoors vs. outdoors vs. pickup vs. delivery

My role

1. Help build and launch dscout diary study (team collaboration)
2. Select 20 “scouts” (dscout participants) from a pool of 300
3. Follow up with 10 scouts throughout 2 weeks
4. Review all 20 scouts’ entries
5. Debrief / create a “snapshot” bio of each participant (Miro)
6. Remote analysis in Miro (team collaboration) to translate research intro insights

Deliverables

1. Midpoint insights document to provide an update to Gordon Food Service stakeholders.
My role: Synthesized our insights

2. A series of articles that provide insight on consumer reactions to restaurants reopening, identifying what normalcy actually is, and defining safety for consumers in the COVID-19 era.

My role:
Synthesize our insights (team collaboration)
Plan article outlines (team collaboration)
Write articles (team collaboration)
Create the layout and assembled the document in InDesign
Illustrate all the visuals in Procreate and Illustrator

3. Curate a 5-min video capturing some of the best moments from dscout entries to share with internal stakeholders at Gordon Food Service and peers at Relish Works. This helped all to understand dscout’s strengths as a research tool.
My role: Plan and build the video in Adobe Premiere