Client: National Restaurant Association
Project: GreenerRestaurants.com
Date Completed: March 1st, 2010
National Restaurants Association represents more than 380,000 businesses in the restaurant industry with sales reaching $580 billion in 2010. DevBridge developed a web-based restaurant education and consumer engagement system.
The system allows NRA to connect restaurants implementing green practices with consumer interested in dining at these institutions. Greener Results, a division of Air Cycle, spearheaded the green program content creation and strategy and DevBridge dove deep into development of one of the larger and more complex projects completed in recent months.
National Restaurant Association wanted a subscription based service which would be easy to use, help restaurants become ‘greener’, communicate their green practices to the consumer clearly, and accommodate social interaction between restaurants in the program and consumers looking for a green dining experience. As part of the service the restaurant would gain access to a wealth of resources including videos, implementation techniques, and case studies. As part of the service the restaurant would gain access to a wealth of resources including videos, implementation techniques, and case studies.
After initial technical specification was ironed out, we created a wide array of mockups that documented all aspects of system functionality. These included, but were not limited to, the registration process, subscription purchase, educational video screens, consumer reviews, messaging components, bulk subscription management and more. We discovered that, besides electronic tools and project sharing software, we really benefited from simple hand drawn wireframes stitched together on a large whiteboard, documenting all branches of application logic.
The essence of the program is simple – restaurants register for the program and receive access to the Greener Restaurants educational videos and best practices implementation checklist. The restaurant owner can keep their progress private or public and watch educational videos about the implementation of these best practices. They are also provided with downloadable resources, further reading content, links to other resources on the web and more. The incentive – the best practices logged as implemented by the restaurant add points to their profile and ranks them higher in the consumer side of the website. Consumers, on the other hand, come to the site to find the "Greener" restaurants, the restaurants who have indicated that they have taken extra steps to be more energy efficient, recycle materials, use eco-friendly paper plates, and more. As a restaurant completes their checklist and their green score increases so does their exposure in the restaurant directory.
For large entities and franchises we created an easy and intuitive interface to purchase bulk subscriptions and later assign them to franchise restaurants. The interface displays a list of available subscriptions that can be assigned with a click of a button. If the franchise restaurant already exists in the system the subscription credit is automatically assigned to the restaurant; if it does not – an email invitation is sent to the email address provided and the recipient can click on a link and claim their delegated subscription. The original purchaser of the subscriptions can track the progress of assigned subscriptions and follow up with franchisees if subscriptions are not being utilized or best practices not implemented.
All subscription type services expire so we wrote an automated service which handles all notifications and subscription renewals. HTML emails remind owners about approaching expirations, upcoming renewals, failed renewals and other communications. A franchise subscription purchaser might have twenty subscriptions expiring all at once so a renewal notice is sent 60 days in advance, and then followed up 30 days in advance before the recurring service tries to process a yearly renewal.
The interactive best practices checklist allows restaurant owners to mark off each best practice and indicate what state their implementation is in. Each status has a specific point value and each best practice implemented adds value and exposure to the restaurant. The owner can also create a dynamic PDF certificate which shows their Best practices implement in the areas of Energy, Waste, Water, and other categories that they can proudly display in their restaurant.
To further improve the value and incentive of the program we allow the customers to rate the restaurant and its implementation of the greener practices. A restaurant can also follow up and respond to the occasional negative or unfair review. The combination of the visible program participation, user reviews, and interactive map searches creates a unique self-propelled environment that adds value both for the restaurant the consumer looking for a place to eat.
Last but not least, we added an administrative panel that the good folks at NRA can use to process orders or issue refunds, review new restaurant additions, delegate subscriptions and create discounts and pricing adjustments. A feature the client really liked was the “impersonate” ability, which allows the administrator to step into the shoes of the user and walk them through the features of the site by using the users account and permissions.
