Reinventing the Nando’s Dine-In Experience
Overview
Date: Q1 2023 - Q3 2023
Nando’s is a household name in the UK and Ireland, with over 400 restaurants serving millions of customers annually. While most think of Nando’s as a restaurant business, its digital experience is crucial in how customers engage with the brand—whether they’re ordering for delivery (fulfilled by Deliveroo), scheduling a collection, or dining in.
Historically, in-restaurant orders were placed at tills, as Nando’s does not offer table service. However, the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped customer expectations across the hospitality sector, accelerating the need for seamless digital ordering. With social distancing regulations in place, there was a surge in demand for Order & Pay at Table (OPAT) solutions, enabling customers to place orders from their phones without queuing.
Rather than relying on third-party white-label solutions, Nando’s set out to create and own its OPAT journey—one that seamlessly integrated into its existing ecosystem while maintaining the brand’s signature experience. After launching the platform, the next challenge was clear: optimise the experience for both customers and restaurant staff, ensuring efficiency, speed, and ease of use.
This case study explores how we refined and evolved Nando’s OPAT experience, balancing customer convenience with operational efficiency to create a digital dining experience that feels just as welcoming and intuitive as walking into a Nando’s restaurant.
Problem Statement
During busy mealtimes, customers dining in face long wait times at the tills, which impacts their experience and causes operational strain. Nandocas managing tills have less time for essential hosting and floor duties, affecting overall restaurant efficiency. Optimising the digital OPAT experience presents a clear opportunity to reduce queue times, improve staff productivity, and enhance the customer journey. Additionally, OPAT orders yield an 8.1% higher spend per head than till orders, offering an improved experience and a measurable business benefit.
We had clear objectives and performance metrics for the work. Nando’s wanted to:
Increase OPAT share of Eat-in orders from 42% to 47%
Increase CSAT from 69% to 72% and 86% to 88% for Web and App
Increase Conversion Rate from 67% to 70% and 69% to 73% for Web and App
Increase Average Order Value from £19.97 to £20.52 to match tills
Users & Audience
With around 48 million orders placed annually, the in-restaurant experience is at the heart of Nando’s. The majority of these orders happen either at the tills or through Order & Pay at Table (OPAT), making both customers and Nandocas (Nando’s team members) key audiences in our design approach.
Nando’s attracts a diverse customer base, with a strong appeal to Gen Z and the emerging Gen A. However, the brand’s reach extends far beyond—welcoming people from all demographics, whether they’re celebrating a special occasion, catching up with friends, enjoying a family meal, or simply satisfying a craving for PERi-PERi.
On the other side of the counter, Nandocas are the backbone of the restaurant experience. Balancing efficiency with hospitality, they juggle multiple responsibilities—from greeting guests and managing queues to preparing orders and maintaining the vibrant energy that defines Nando’s. Any digital solution must enhance—not hinder—their ability to deliver great service.
By understanding the needs, behaviours, and motivations of both customers and staff, we set out to create a seamless, intuitive OPAT experience that works for everyone.
Roles & Responsibilities
As Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for driving the project's design and research strategy while ensuring alignment with business goals and technical feasibility. I worked closely with a Lead Product Manager and Lead Engineer, collaborating with a team that included a Product Designer, Research Manager, and Engineers, as well as key stakeholders and business managers invested and critical to the project’s success.
From a design leadership perspective, I established skeleton processes, timeframes, and key deliverables, ensuring a structured and efficient approach. I balanced hands-on design work with mentorship and delegation, empowering my team while maintaining a high standard of quality. My responsibilities included:
Design Leadership & Execution
Defined design strategy, frameworks, and deliverables.
Partnered with a Product Designer to execute design work, ensuring consistency and impact.
Produced UI designs, documentation, and synthesis of research findings.
Research & Insights
Drafted research methodologies and artifacts, and reviewed and refined in collaboration with the Research Manager.
Conducted in-person interviews with customers and Nandocas in restaurants.
Synthesized research findings to inform design decisions and business strategy.
Planned and facilitated ideation workshops to align teams on key challenges and opportunities.
Team Leadership & Empowerment
Managed a team of five Product Designers, overseeing their growth, performance, and output.
Provided mentorship and strategic direction, ensuring the team was empowered to contribute effectively.
Reviewed and approved work, balancing autonomy with guidance to maintain design excellence.
Contributed to wider team and company initiatives, driving collaboration across departments.
By leading both the strategic and execution aspects of the project, I ensured that our OPAT experience was both customer-centric and operationally efficient while fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and innovation within my team.
Scope & Constraints
The project ran from Q1 2023 to Q3 2023, with a primary focus on optimizing the Web Experience for Order & Pay at Table (OPAT). While our efforts centred on the web, we ensured that any insights, improvements, or new features could be considered for future integration into the App Experience.
Key constraints included team capacity and competing priorities. The engineering team consisted of five Engineers, one Lead Engineer, and a QA, balancing multiple responsibilities beyond OPAT. On the design side, while we had a wider design team, only two Designers—including myself—were dedicated to this project, alongside other initiatives.
Given these constraints, our approach prioritized regular value delivery through incremental improvements and phased releases, ensuring that each iteration enhanced the experience for customers and restaurant staff while remaining feasible within our resource limitations.
Process
Discover
Before designing solutions, we needed to deeply understand the challenges, opportunities, and behaviours surrounding OPAT. Our goal was to ensure we were solving the right problems and creating an experience that worked for both customers and Nandocas. This meant taking a holistic, data-driven approach—blending qualitative and quantitative insights to form a complete picture of the current experience.
Laying the Foundation with Existing Insights
We began by analyzing secondary research already conducted across the Web and App for OPAT along with conducting our generative secondary research. This included:
Competitor analysis to benchmark against industry best practices from websites to QR codes for entry into the journey.
Heuristic analysis to identify usability friction points within our current designs.
Google Analytics and Hotjar data to reveal user behaviour patterns.
Looker deep dives to uncover broader trends in ordering habits.
App reviews & Hotjar feedback to understand direct customer pain points.
We went back through the evolution of OPAT at Nando’s and cross-referenced data against releases and updates for everything from digital features to in-restaurant training material for Nandocas.
These insights provided a strong baseline, but we needed real-world perspectives to truly understand how OPAT was being used in restaurants.
Engaging with Customers & Nandocas
To bridge the gap between data and human experience, we conducted primary generative research in restaurants, speaking directly with both customers and Nandocas. We:
Conducted 24 in-depth customer interviews to explore motivations, frustrations, and behaviours.
Held 12 interviews with Nandocas to understand their operational challenges and how OPAT fit into their workflow.
Ran 88 intercept surveys at tills, capturing insights from customers at the moment.
Distributed user surveys to gather broader attitudinal and behavioural data.
This mixed-method approach ensured we captured a rounded view of quantitative, qualitative, behavioural, and attitudinal insights, helping us see the experience through both user and business lenses.
Structuring Research for Meaningful Insights
To maintain rigour and consistency, we:
Created participant consent forms to ensure ethical research practices.
Developed structured discussion guides for both customers and Nandocas, keeping interviews focused and comparable.
Reviewed the history of OPAT projects to understand previous iterations, learnings, and business goals.
Diverging to Explore Possibilities
The Discovery phase was all about exploration—gathering as much insight as possible before moving into definition. By starting broad and diverging, we ensured we weren’t jumping to solutions prematurely. This research not only identified pain points but also uncovered opportunities to enhance the OPAT experience in ways that benefited both customers and restaurant teams.
With this rich foundation of insights, we were ready to synthesize findings, define key problems, and move toward impactful solutions.
Define
With a wealth of research insights gathered, the next step was to synthesize, structure, and define the core problems impacting the OPAT experience. This phase was critical in ensuring we focused on solving the right challenges, rather than making assumptions or jumping to solutions too soon.
Synthesizing Research into Actionable Insights
To make sense of the data, we needed a structured approach. I led the process of affinity mapping to synthesize qualitative insights from our interviews and surveys, working closely with my Product Designer to ensure a rigorous and methodical approach. Together, we:
Created an affinity diagram, grouping insights from customer and Nandoca interviews into meaningful themes.
Structured tables of insights, layering quantitative data from Looker, Google Analytics, and Hotjar to validate and refine our understanding of behavioural patterns.
Probed deeper into early themes, ensuring we weren’t just identifying surface-level issues but also uncovering underlying motivations and friction points.
Formed "How Might We" (HMW) questions, reframing our insights into opportunity areas for design exploration.
I guided my Product Designer through this data-driven approach, coaching them on how to critically analyze research findings, draw connections between disparate data points, and translate these into clear design challenges.
Key Insights from the Research
Through this rigorous synthesis, we uncovered several critical problems that needed addressing:
Customers thought they had to download Nando’s app to use OPAT – leading to unnecessary friction and drop-off.
Some customers preferred human interaction at tills to:
Understand out-of-stock items, upgrades, flavours, and new menu options.
Customize their meals more flexibly—e.g., crispy skin, basted sweetcorn, or selecting specific chicken cuts—which OPAT doesn’t currently allow.
Certain customer groups found OPAT essential, including:
Those with language barriers or social anxieties felt pressured when there was a big queue behind them at the tills.
Lack of awareness of the loyalty scheme – many customers didn’t understand what it was, how to use it, or what rewards they could earn. There was little visibility of this in the ordering journey, despite free food being a strong incentive.
Low awareness of OPAT and QR codes at tables – exacerbated by the business decision to switch from visible QR codes to metal table caddies, effectively hiding them from customers.
Lack of reassurance when ordering via OPAT – Customers needed more confirmation and confidence that:
They had placed their order correctly.
Their order was successfully received by the kitchen.
They weren’t being overlooked while watching other tables receive food.
Empowering My Team & Driving Alignment
Beyond conducting work myself, I also:
Coached my Product Designer on breaking down complex research into actionable themes.
Guided them in facilitating research synthesis workshops, ensuring stakeholders could engage with insights firsthand.
Worked cross-functionally to align with Product and Engineering on defining the scope and technical feasibility of addressing these problems.
After synthesizing our research, we ran a collaborative workshop to translate insights into How Might We (HMW) questions. This ensured we were framing the right problems to solve, aligning with both primary and secondary KPIs.
Through structured discussion and voting, the team prioritized six key themes:
Setting expectations
Signposting and awareness
Personalization and gamification
Alternative entry points
Onboarding and sign-up
Next steps and instructions
The HMW statements that emerged as our focus areas were:
HMW develop new and existing digital customer paths into our OPAT funnel.
HMW match the capabilities of OPAT to our tills.
HMW make the digital OPAT experience more inclusive.
HMW make customers feel more engaged while placing their OPAT orders.
HMW increase customer confidence after they have finished their OPAT order.
By structuring our research this way, we transformed raw data into clear, actionable problem statements, setting the foundation for the next phase: Ideation and design exploration.
Develop
As we moved into the Develop phase, we focused on exploring and expanding potential solutions based on the insights gathered. To foster inclusive and diverse ideation, we ran two structured ideation workshops, opting for brainwriting exercises over more traditional Crazy 8s or 6-ups. This approach ensured that both extroverts and introverts had an equal voice, while also encouraging teams to build on each other's ideas, strengthening the overall solution space.
To drive cross-functional collaboration, we ran these workshops with stakeholders from across the business, ensuring representation from product, engineering, research, operations, and customer services. By bringing these diverse perspectives together, we were able to align our thinking early on and generate a broad range of ideas that balanced customer needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.
After the workshops, I worked closely with my Product Designer to synthesize the ideas generated, structuring them into themes and opportunities. Within our core product team, we then prioritized these ideas against a Value vs. Effort matrix, ensuring that we focused on the highest-impact opportunities that could be delivered in a phased and iterative approach.
Key Ideas We Brought Forward:
Leveraging the in-restaurant Wi-Fi connection screen to deep-link customers directly into the ordering journey, with auto-selection based on app installation for a frictionless start.
Introducing an order tracker on the confirmation screen to give customers real-time visibility of their order status. This was temporarily blocked due to the rollout of a new Kitchen Display System (KDS) across all restaurants, which was essential for tracking orders accurately.
Improving key touchpoints throughout the ordering journey by refining microcopy, guest checkout flows, app-web inconsistencies, checkout steps, and payment types.
Enhancing product recommendations and upsells to drive both revenue and customer satisfaction.
Ideas Explored but Not Prioritized:
Some ideas showed clear potential but were deprioritized due to business constraints, technical dependencies, or risk factors. These included:
Revisiting the QR code entry point on table caddies for improved visibility.
Bringing OPAT customization in line with tills, allowing customers to modify their meals more flexibly.
Enabling multiple loyalty reward redemptions in a single transaction.
Introducing the ability to redeem gift cards and process allergy orders via OPAT.
Facilitating group ordering, introducing all discount code types, and enabling multi-language translations for accessibility.
Leadership & Collaboration:
Throughout this phase, I provided strategic direction while ensuring my Product Designer had the space to grow and take ownership of key initiatives. I supported them through coaching and pairing, helping to sharpen their prioritization skills and ensuring their contributions were visible to stakeholders.
I also worked closely with Product Managers and Engineers to align design and technical feasibility, ensuring that our solutions were ambitious yet practical. By keeping stakeholders engaged, we successfully gained buy-in on prioritization decisions, setting the stage for impactful execution in the Delivery phase.
Deliver
As we moved into the Deliver phase of the Double Diamond process, our focus shifted from exploration to execution—taking our prioritized ideas, refining them into tangible solutions, and rigorously testing them before rollout. This phase required strong collaboration across disciplines, balancing speed with quality, and ensuring our solutions were both technically feasible and impactful for customers.
From Concept to Implementation
With a clear set of prioritized initiatives, we moved into detailed prototyping and testing, working closely with engineers, QA, and stakeholders to ensure smooth execution.
Converging on Final Solutions: We refined ideas into testable prototypes, aligning them with business goals, technical feasibility, and customer needs.
Design Iteration & Validation: High-fidelity designs were created in Figma, followed by usability testing to iron out friction points before development.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Regular working sessions with engineers, QA, and product teams helped us proactively address technical constraints and ensure feasibility.
Key Deliverables & Execution
1. Wi-Fi Landing Page – A Seamless OPAT Entry Point
To remove friction from the ordering process, we leveraged the in-restaurant Wi-Fi connection screen as a direct entry point into OPAT. Given poor mobile signal in many locations, this provided a reliable and intuitive way for customers to start their digital journey.
Designed, iterated, and user-tested prototypes to ensure clarity and ease of use.
Built within the Skyfii captive portal, requiring coordination between UX, Product, and Engineering.
Ensured responsive implementation across multiple devices.
2. OPAT Order Tracker – Prototyping & Feasibility Analysis
Customer insights revealed a lack of confidence after placing an order—many guests were unsure if their order had been received or when it would arrive. To solve this, we explored an Order Tracker feature that would display real-time updates on order progress.
Developed high-fidelity prototypes showcasing different tracking methods.
Worked with engineers and technical teams to map feasibility against existing restaurant tech (Kitchen Display System rollout).
Encountered a technical blocker: rollout inconsistencies meant only 50% of restaurants could support tracking, risking a fragmented user experience.
Rather than shipping a partial experience, we documented the work for a full future rollout once the KDS implementation was complete.
3. Iterating on the OPAT Journey – UX & CRO Optimization
Throughout the build and implementation process, we continued to optimize critical journey touchpoints by addressing friction points that surfaced through research and analytics.
Updated key messaging and microcopy to improve clarity (e.g., allergy orders, privacy policy, order confirmation).
Fixed inconsistencies between the App and the Web to provide a more seamless, unified experience.
Optimized guest checkout flows to reduce abandonment rates.
Developed the post-order experience with clearer reassurance messaging and upsell opportunities.
4. Second-Order Carousel – A Data-Driven Revenue Booster
One of the most impactful optimizations we introduced was a second-order carousel on the post-order page. This subtle nudge encouraged customers to place additional in-restaurant orders, improving both engagement and revenue.
Designed and tested multiple UI variations to determine the most effective layout and messaging.
Ran A/B tests to measure conversion impact.
Results showed a £120,000 increase in revenue per quarter, validating the effectiveness of this addition.
Continuous Testing, CRO, and A/B Experimentation
As part of our conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy, we ran a structured A/B testing program, continuously validating assumptions and refining features:
Built a backlog of A/B test opportunities, prioritizing based on effort vs. impact.
Ran controlled experiments to measure changes in conversion, engagement, and confidence.
Used Hotjar, GA, and Looker analytics to monitor behavioural shifts and optimize the OPAT journey.
Engineering, QA & Release Management
A critical part of delivery was ensuring that everything we built was high-quality, scalable, and free of major usability or technical issues.
Worked closely with engineers to refine technical implementation details.
QA testing cycles ensured all releases were stable before launch.
Gradual rollouts and feature flags allowed us to monitor real-world performance before scaling changes nationwide.
Balancing Immediate Impact with Future Growth
Not every idea could be shipped immediately, but we ensured that work didn’t go to waste:
Some ideas, like Gift Cards and Group Ordering, were moved into the product backlog for future development.
Loyalty comprehension and personalization were aligned with broader strategic initiatives.
Documented and shared insights with product and business leaders to inform roadmap decisions.
The Deliver phase was not just about launching features—it was about ensuring each solution was well-executed, optimized, and scalable. Through strong leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and a data-driven approach, we successfully improved the OPAT experience while setting the foundation for continued iteration and growth.
Outcome and Results
Our work had a national impact, successfully shaping the Order & Pay at Table (OPAT) experience across both Web and App. Through a large-scale discovery and design initiative, we delivered a more seamless, efficient, and engaging digital ordering journey for customers while driving meaningful business results.
One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was seeing my Product Designer significantly level up. Through coaching, guidance, and pairing, they excelled, producing outstanding work that caught the attention of key stakeholders. I regularly received positive feedback and praise for their contributions, which was a testament to their growth and commitment throughout the project.
Our original performance metrics not only met but, in many cases, exceeded expectations:
OPAT’s share of Eat-in orders grew from 42% to 48% (exceeding our target of 47%) – and continues to rise.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) improved from 69% to 85% (Web) and 86% to 88% (App), showing significant growth beyond our initial goals.
Conversion Rate saw a positive uplift, reaching 68% (Web) and 71% (App), progressing toward our targets of 70% and 73%, respectively.
Average Order Value (AOV) increased, aligning more closely with till orders, demonstrating improved customer confidence in the digital experience.
Beyond the numbers, this project fostered stronger collaboration and new ways of working, deepening our understanding of both customers and the business. We established new processes, conducted A/B tests, contributed to Product backlogs, and strengthened relationships across teams.
Through presentations and updates, we helped evangelize UX within the business, reinforcing the value of human-centred design in driving both customer satisfaction and commercial success. This project not only delivered tangible improvements but also laid the foundation for ongoing innovation, ensuring that Nando’s digital dining experience continues to evolve and thrive.