Gousto
Innovating the menu experience for Gousto’s growth strategy
Meal kit delivery
4 weeks delivery time
Overview
Activities
- Research Strategy Definition
- Customer Interviews & Behaviour Simulation
- Data Gathering (3000+ Customers)
- Jobs-to-Be-Done Analysis
- Opportunity Identification & Prioritisation
- Hypothesis & Solution Exploration
- Prototype Testing with Real Data
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Stakeholder Insights Presentation
Introduction
Gousto wanted to strengthen its position in the meal-kit category by making meaningful choice a foundation of its growth strategy. As the number of weekly recipes increased, the team needed to understand how greater variety might affect customers’ ability to browse, decide and feel confident in their selections.
Working closely with Gousto’s product, research and insights teams, we combined customer interviews with large-scale behavioural simulation and prototype testing using real recipe data. This revealed what meaningful choice means to customers, identified the most valuable opportunities within the menu experience and gave the business a clear, evidence-based direction for future product discovery and development.
Defined the business vision, objectives and key results
Challenges
Gousto’s advantage is their scale and their ability to offer more meaningful choice to their customers. Our challenge was to help Gousto explore a future menu experience and identify potential problems or changes in user behaviour if there was significantly more recipes available to customers each week.
Approach
We leveraged the expertise of Gousto’s research teams to fill our knowledge gap.
Defined a product and research strategy for continual discovery and development
Working closely with the discovery and insights teams within Gousto we defined a clear research plan. With clear purpose and perspective we followed and updated a live backlog of research to be conducted. We shared our discovery frameworks to enhance and compliment Gousto’s discovery function.
Simulated the existing menu experience using real data to gather behavioural data at scale
In order to understand how users’ behaviours would change when presented with more choice we emulated and tracked a scaled version of the existing experience using hundreds of recipes instead of 50. We conducted the test at a large scale in order to improve the tests accuracy, in the end we reached over 3000 customers.
Conducted generative customer interviews to understand user behaviour
We assumed from the outset that any problems or frustrations that users had with the current menu would be significantly amplified once Gousto scaled their menu. Speaking with customers gave us a clear understanding of their mental models and frustrations. Clear patterns emerged and we documented the findings as jobs-to-be-done, opportunity areas and problem statements.
Prioritised the jobs-to-be-done by surveying over 3000 customers
It was imperative to learn how important our menu experience insights were. The objective of the survey was to rank how important the customer’s jobs are and how satisfied or dissatisfied they were. This evidence highlighted the valuable opportunity areas.
Defined opportunity areas, hypotheses and competing solutions to address priority problem statements
Working closely with the Gousto team we generated multiple assumptions on how we would solve the priority problems. This multidisciplinary mix of viewpoints accelerated the iteration of ideas which resulted in a subset of high quality solutions. We challenged ourselves to find competing solutions in order to test the boundaries of the hypotheses.
Tested prototypes to better understand our hypothesis and inform a roadmap of opportunities
For the most accurate results, we brought prioritised solutions to life using real data and coded prototypes to help users trust the usability and viability of each solution. The tests helped us know which ideas could be brought into production and to learn more about the users’ mental models.
Collaborated closely with Gousto’s product team to formulate the future product discovery and development strategy
The outcome of the project gave the business a much better understanding of customer behaviour around recipe choice. We worked hand in hand with the Gousto team to communicate our findings in a way that resonated with key stakeholders which in turn provided their teams with a clear direction for the roadmap ahead.
Summary
Our work with Gousto provided strategic clarity and actionable insights, enabling the business to refine its product development and discovery efforts. By deeply understanding what ‘meaningful choice’ means to customers, we helped prioritise the most impactful opportunities across the entire customer journey—from selection to retention—ensuring a seamless and engaging experience.
Project impact
“We’ve loved working with Pattrn because of the way they’ve committed to our long term success. The team has been working hand in hand with our own product teams. They’ve worked with our people to further develop our capabilities through in-depth Jobs to Be Done survey, establishing documentation and sharing best practises, and developing tools together. Their impact goes much beyond the project we tasked them with.”
