Online Menu
Back in 2017, when e-commerce adoption in Argentina was still maturing, the company initially set out to build a standard e-commerce platform for retail segments (fashion, electronics, toys, etc.). The turning point came when a well-known burger chain showed interest. Through conversations, the team discovered a bigger opportunity: adapting the platform to create an online menu for restaurants.
Context
Restaurants in Argentina mainly took orders by phone or WhatsApp. Building an online menu was a pioneering idea that could bring value to both B2B clients (restaurants) and B2C users (diners), but it also required educating the market on a new way of ordering.
GOAL
Develop a digital menu platform tailored for restaurants, enabling users to browse products, place orders online, and review order history, while keeping the experience simple for both customers and merchants.
SOLUTION
We repurposed the existing e-commerce foundation and adapted it to the restaurant context. The design followed Material Design guidelines, kept simple to reduce frontend development complexity given the team’s limited capacity.
Key flows designed included:
Sign up / Login / Password recovery
Browse menu and place an order
Add a product
Review order details
Confirm or cancel an order
Check past orders
Log out
These prototypes became the V1 of the online menu and laid the groundwork for future iterations.
TOOLS
My role & scope
Defined the product experience and adapted retail e-commerce flows to the restaurant use case.
Designed high-fidelity screens directly in line with Material Design, ensuring clarity and fast implementation.
Collaborated with founders and developers to prioritize features based on feasibility.
Participated in internal reviews and iterations to refine flows before handoff.
Research & benchmarking
At that time, the main active food ordering platforms in the region were PedidosYa and Glovo. Our team found Glovo’s usability particularly strong, so we drew heavily from its user experience patterns. We also combined selected elements from PedidosYa and complemented them with best practices from standard e-commerce flows such as checkout, cart management, and order confirmation.
Wireframes & design decisions
Due to time constraints, the team went directly to high-fidelity screens.
Focused on clear structure and straightforward navigation, minimizing custom design work to speed up development.
Prioritized mobile-first layouts, anticipating that most orders would come from smartphones.
Final design
Released the first version of the online menu platform.
Restaurants could publish their products and users could place orders online.
Set the foundation for expanding into the food-tech vertical.
What I learned
Focus is essential. The team debated between retail e-commerce and restaurant menus; narrowing scope allowed real progress.
Simple systems accelerate delivery. Leveraging Material Design without over-customization kept the project feasible.
Education is part of design. Introducing online ordering required not only UI design, but also helping clients and users understand the value of a new way of consuming.
What I would have done differently
Spent more time upfront mapping differences between retail e-commerce and restaurant ordering.
Tested flows with actual restaurant staff or users before release.
What I took for the future
The importance of market fit: design must adapt to context, not just technology.
Confidence in designing end-to-end flows that balance user clarity and technical feasibility.
Early exposure to the challenges of designing in a startup environment with limited resources.
BONUS TRACK
At the same time, we designed and prototyped the order management system.