Digital transformation to support the growth of a healthy and sustainable fast food offering.

Retail
Food & Beverage
Industries

Retail, Food & Beverage

Project

Itsu

What we delivered

Web app | Third party integration

The Lowdown

The first Itsu restaurant – opening in Chelsea in 1997 – was born out of its founder, Julian Metcalfe’s love for the harmony and precision of Japanese food. 

Today – over 2 decades and 80 restaurants later – nutrition and flavour remain at heart of what they do. They offer ‘beautiful food, beautifully done.’

Itsu ‘health & happiness’ dishes are packed with vitamins, fibre and protein. Over a third of their range is plant-based and they have a strong commitment to sustainability as ‘there is no planet B’.

Itsu disrupts the fast-food market with its health-focussed, nutritious, and sustainable offer. And with its new website and digital overhaul, we worked to help Itsu keep its promise to ‘stay restless for another 20 years.’

Discover

Field Studies
User interviews
Stakeholder interviews
Constraints

Explore

Analysis
Persona building
Task analysis
Journey mapping

Test

Usability testing
User group outreach
Benchmark testing
Accessibility evaluation

Listen

Surveys
Analytics Review
Usability bug revie
Feedback review

The Problem

In a post-Covid landscape, Itsu wanted to boost its position as an industry leading, premium Asian-health fast food brand. Their website no longer reflected how they saw themselves. It was hard to manage and wasn’t properly integrated into Itsu’s infrastructure.

To achieve the growth they wanted, Itsu needed to overhaul its entire digital ecosystem. Processes were a hodgepodge of different systems that had been quickly stuck together. 

This meant their many systems and vendors were disconnected. So, there were limits on Itsu’s potential. They were missing out on upselling and gifting opportunities. And they had no option for Apple or Android pay.

Itsu needed a more robust technical foundation for its systems across more than 80 restaurants. This meant a complete digital transformation across the business so they could support demand and business growth. 

They also needed to review their business model so they could better support growth through franchising and new stores.

The Solution

We worked with Itsu to build a category-leading website. It needed to drive sales, tell the Itsu story and build brand loyalty.

Itsu’s entire system was crying out for an upgrade to make them more competitive and give them an effective marketing channel. 

Their new website required integration with the rest of their digital infrastructure and the team needed better digital tooling for rolling out their content strategy across product lines and new initiatives. It also needed to be easier to manage and better represent their brand.

By carefully analysing their workflows and business processes, we could map out a plan for the new website build including content management as well as new systems to support growth.

Requirements

  • Hosting We used AWS for its ability to host in a secure and fast way. AWS is also flexible and scalable for business growth. 
  • Third  party integration Using Strapi for the third party integration sped up the development process, bringing more value to the client. Strapi is a headless CMS that gives Itsu the flexibility to use any future technology that makes sense. From this foundation, they can make adjustments without the need for a full rewrite of the codebase. 
  • Programming language We chose Vue as the javascript framework on the frontend for its ease of use and development speed. Used with the web app framework, Nuxt, meant we could optimise a highly dynamic and responsive frontend with Server Side Rendering for excellent Search Engine Optimisation.
  • CRM integration Itsu already had the Atreemo CRM in use on their existing website. As the client wanted to keep this CRM, we worked to integrate it into the new project. 

The Product

Itsu knew they could count on our team as their trusted partner on this project. We helped them manage their entire technical delivery, including managing other technical suppliers. The Itsu team could relax in the knowledge we were leading the project and that we had everything covered.

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