top of page
An online wholesale app that makes it easier for restaurants to discover products, place orders, and restock everything they need in one place.
Executive summary
Kawa Trading is a food storage and distribution business serving Chinese restaurants across Philadelphia. The company wanted to bring its traditional ordering process online, starting from zero.
As the Product Designer, I led UX research, competitive research, branding, and UI design. I studied existing online ordering platforms and researched both sides of Kawa’s business—from restaurant owners’ ordering habits and pain points to the warehouse team’s inventory and fulfillment workflow.
These insights helped me define the product structure, brand direction, and UI for a new online ordering platform designed to make ordering easier for restaurants while supporting Kawa’s day-to-day operations.
The goal: connect the restaurant and warehouse sides through a simpler digital ordering experience.
Problem
Kawa Trading is a food storage and distribution business serving restaurants across Philadelphia. As the company expands, it needs an online platform that makes restaurant ordering faster and easier.
The existing ordering process creates friction in several key areas:
-
Early delivery needs: Restaurants need delivery times that fit their early-morning operations.
-
Slow reordering: Reordering frequently purchased products requires too many steps.
-
Limited inventory visibility: Customers have difficulty knowing what is in stock and how much they can order.
-
Language barrier: Kawa has many long-standing Chinese restaurant customers, making bilingual product search an important part of the online experience.
-
Unclear quantities: Package and case sizes are not always clear, while restaurants typically order in bulk.
The solution:
A restaurant-first ordering experience
The final solution turned our research insights into a simpler ordering experience built around the way restaurant owners actually shop:
-
Reorder faster: We made past orders and frequently purchased products easy to access, so customers could quickly rebuild their regular orders.
-
Clear inventory & quantities: We made stock levels, case sizes, quantities, and prices easier to understand, helping customers order the right amount.
-
Bilingual search: We supported both Chinese and English product names, making it easier for Kawa’s Chinese restaurant customers to find what they need.
-
Flexible delivery: We added early-morning delivery options to better fit restaurant operating hours.
-
Less time ordering: By focusing on reordering, inventory, pricing, and delivery, we helped restaurant owners complete their orders faster and get back to work.
Project goals
We defined three goals to guide the product from the ground up:
-
Understand both sides of the business: Research restaurant owners’ ordering habits and pain points, while also understanding how the warehouse team manages inventory, orders, and fulfillment.
-
Create a simpler ordering experience: Reduce friction across the core journey—check inventory → find products → compare prices → reorder → schedule delivery—with a focus on bulk ordering, bilingual search, and clear product information.
-
Build a strong digital foundation: Develop a brand and UI system that brings Kawa’s offline business online while creating a scalable foundation for future product growth.
Goal 1
Make restaurant ordering faster and easier
Goal 2
Connect restaurant needs with warehouse operations
Goal 3
Build a scalable brand and UI foundation for Kawa’s online platform
Role
Product Designer
— Brand, UI & UX Design
Team
-
2 Product Designers
-
Group Product Manager
-
Head of Engineering
Timeline
Feb. 2026 – Aug. 2026
Discovery:
“Kitchen diaries”
Rather than interviewing restaurant staff about how they order ingredients, we went to observe the process directly. We shadowed restaurant owners and kitchen staff as they checked inventory, searched for ingredients, compared prices, reordered staples, and scheduled deliveries during their everyday shifts.
The defining insight was seeing firsthand how a predictable task became inefficient under staffing constraints and language barriers. Most restaurants had a stable list of ingredients they needed to reorder every day or week. But with limited staff, ordering was often squeezed between other kitchen responsibilities, turning a familiar routine into repeated searching and checking. For staff working across language barriers, unfamiliar product names, descriptions, and package sizes also led to incorrect items being ordered.
Post-shift interviews confirmed what the observation showed: the problem wasn't a lack of products or features. It was an inefficient reorder process built around too much manual work and too much room for error.
Three North Star principles followed directly from what we observed:
-
Familiar: Make frequently ordered ingredients easy to find and reorder.
-
Efficient: Reduce the steps needed to complete a routine order.
-
Clear: Make product names, quantities, and packaging easy to understand across language barriers.
The “Pantry” Architecture
Back at the office, we used what we learned from restaurant staff to rethink how the ordering experience should work.
Instead of asking restaurants to browse through a large catalog every time they need to order, we designed the experience around what they actually need to restock.
Restaurants can upload their menu and enter their average daily guest count. Based on this information, the system generates a default Pantry with recommended ingredients and estimated quantities.
This creates a more personalized starting point for each restaurant while also giving Kawa a better understanding of which product categories are needed and in what volume.
The goal was simple: make ordering feel less like shopping and more like restocking a restaurant.At the same time, the Pantry creates a two-way benefit: restaurants get a more relevant ordering experience, while Kawa gains a clearer picture of what products its customers need and how much inventory to prepare.
Step 1:
Build My Pantry
Restaurants upload their menu and daily guest count. The system generates a personalized Pantry with the ingredients they are likely to need and the estimated quantity.
Step 2:
Review & Adjust
Restaurants can review the suggested items, adjust quantities, add products, or remove anything they don't need.
Step 3:
Quick Reorder
Frequently purchased items and past orders are easy to access, making repeat orders faster without starting from search.
Step 4:
Product Details
Clear information on product name, package size, quantity, price, and availability helps reduce ordering mistakes, especially when products have both Chinese and English names.
Step 5:
Delivery & Checkout
A focused checkout flow lets restaurants confirm quantities, review substitutions, and select a delivery time before placing the order.
Build My Pantry
Review & Adjust
Quick Reorder
Product Details
Delivery & Checkout
Modular ordering framework
I worked with Product and Engineering to create a modular ordering framework built around the restaurant’s recurring purchasing needs.
Rather than designing each screen as a separate experience, we created reusable components that could support different parts of the ordering journey:
-
Pantry-driven: Components are built around each restaurant’s recommended products and quantities, generated from their menu and daily guest volume.
-
Reusable: The same components can work across the Pantry, search, product details, and checkout experiences.
-
Task-focused: Each component supports a specific action—checking inventory, adjusting quantities, reordering products, or scheduling delivery.
-
Scalable: The system can adapt as Kawa adds new products, categories, or supplier requirements without redesigning the experience from scratch.
This helped us move away from a traditional “browse and buy” model toward a system designed for repeat purchasing, better inventory planning, and faster restaurant ordering.
Getting everyone onboard
Building the right solution was only half the challenge. Because we were creating the ordering experience from scratch, there was no existing product model to align around. Product, Engineering, Operations, suppliers, and restaurant teams each had different expectations of what the experience should be.
The biggest risk was getting too far into the design before everyone agreed on the problem we were solving. Restaurant teams needed a faster way to reorder familiar ingredients, while internal teams had questions around inventory data, supplier requirements, and how much personalization we could realistically support.
Together with Product, I focused on three things:
Because there was no existing product to reference, I used high-fidelity prototypes to bring the concept to life. Stakeholders could experience the flow from finding familiar ingredients to checkout and delivery, making it easier to discuss what worked and what needed to change.
02 Make an abstract idea tangible.
We brought restaurant and operations teams into early working sessions and used real ordering scenarios to shape the product direction. This helped us validate the reorder-first concept before investing heavily in the solution.
01 Start with the people closest to the problem.
Rather than treating design as a handoff, we worked closely with Product and Engineering throughout the process. We tested assumptions, surfaced technical constraints early, and iterated on the architecture together.This helped turn an unproven concept into a shared product direction, giving Product, Engineering, Operations, and restaurant teams a clear foundation to build from.
03 Build the product together.
Solution design
Four design decisions, one coherent system. Each decision below addresses a specific friction point identified in the discovery phase and helps connect the restaurant ordering experience with Kawa’s inventory and delivery operations.
The Pantry as the starting point
The biggest insight from our research was that restaurants don't want to browse—they want to restock. We made the Pantry the foundation of the experience, generating a default list of products and quantities based on each restaurant's menu and daily guest volume. It also includes a suggested delivery date and time, giving restaurants a clear starting point while helping Kawa understand what products and quantities each customer is likely to need.
Smarter search and recommendations
Product discovery was complicated by both a large catalog and limited inventory visibility. We designed search to work across Chinese and English product names and added recommendations when an item was out of stock. Instead of stopping the ordering process, the system suggests relevant alternatives, helping restaurants complete their orders while giving Kawa a better way to manage product availability.
Quick reorder
Many restaurants repeatedly purchase the same ingredients, yet the traditional process required them to search for those products again. We brought previous orders and frequently purchased items directly into the Pantry, allowing staff to quickly add familiar products without starting from search. The goal was to turn repeat ordering into a simple restocking task.
Delivery and checkout
The final step needed to be just as straightforward as adding products. We designed checkout around the information that matters most: quantities, availability, delivery date, and delivery time. This gave restaurant staff a clear way to review their order before submitting it, while giving Kawa the information needed to prepare and fulfill each delivery.
Business Impact
The Kawa project fundamentally changed how the business connects with restaurants and creates opportunities to scale.
-
Customer growth: Successfully helped Kawa gain 10+ new restaurant clients, expanding its reach within the Chinese restaurant community and strengthening its warehouse-to-restaurant network.
-
Business growth: The new digital ordering experience contributed to a ~20% increase in profits, creating a stronger foundation for continued customer and revenue growth.
-
Operational efficiency: The Pantry framework connected restaurant menus, guest volume, purchasing patterns, and inventory needs, giving Kawa better visibility into demand and helping the warehouse plan supply more effectively.
-
Market positioning: The new platform established Kawa as a more competitive Chinese restaurant food distribution partner, combining its traditional warehouse operation with a modern digital ordering experience.
The 10+ new clients and ~20% profit growth reflect the broader business impact of bringing Kawa’s traditional warehouse-to-restaurant model online. Rather than treating the platform as simply an e-commerce storefront, we designed it as a connection between restaurant demand and warehouse supply.
Welcome
Home
Products
Order
Confirmation
Learnings
Design for both sides of the business: The restaurant and warehouse have different needs, but they are part of the same workflow. Understanding both sides helped us design an experience that makes ordering easier for restaurants while giving Kawa better visibility into demand and inventory.
Start with behavior, not features: The Pantry came from a simple observation: restaurants repeatedly buy the same products. Designing around this behavior helped us move away from a traditional browse-first model and focus on faster, more relevant ordering.
A strong foundation matters: Starting from zero meant we had to think beyond individual screens. The brand, Pantry structure, bilingual system, and modular UI created a foundation that Kawa can continue to build on as its customer base and online business grow.
Other Projects
Let's Connect
Feel free to reach out for collaborations or just a friendly hello
emiliasundesign@gmail.com
bottom of page