Designing a B2B Food Intelligence Platform for Smarter Procurement
PRODUCT Design / 2025
A data-driven compliance and decision-support platform for restaurants, schools, and food suppliers.
When foodservice teams like restaurants, schools, and distributors need to make nutrition-based procurement decisions, they often face scattered data, complex guidelines, and inefficient tools. This fragmentation makes compliance harder, slows decision-making, and increases operational risk.
This project focused on designing a clear, intuitive B2B platform that brings nutrition guidelines, sourcing data, and compliance requirements into a single, usable experience helping teams make informed decisions with confidence.
TIMELINE
2 Months
THE TEAM
Tejaswini (me) - Designer
Madhu Nair - PM
Dixit Patel - Developer
MY ROLE
Led end-to-end UX and UI design for a data-heavy B2B food intelligence platform managing 1.72M+ product records for restaurants and school districts. Owned research, prototyping, and design systems to simplify complex procurement workflows while ensuring FDA compliance.
Conducted user research and competitive analysis to inform product strategy.
Designed from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes.
Built a scalable design system with 35+ reusable UI components.
Mapped user flows and information architecture for multiple roles and workflows.
Partnered with stakeholders to iterate through feedback and alignment.
Restaurants, School Districts, Suppliers, Procurement officials
Figma, FigJam, Notion, Zoom, Zoho
the goal.
Foodservice teams such as restaurants, schools, and distributors struggle with scattered data, complex nutrition guidelines, and outdated tools when making nutrition-based decisions.
The goal was to simplify food standards, enable confident decision-making, and design a flexible, scalable platform that adapts to diverse roles, workflows, and future needs.
Key Features
Dynamic product search across nutrition and compliance criteria.
Multi-tier subscription model (individuals, organizations, enterprise).
Enterprise-level user and data management.
Easy reordering and sharing capabilities.
Business goals/Outcomes
Increase user conversion and retention.
Grow subscriber base across tiers.
Drive platform adoption among enterprise clients (e.g., schools, Industries, large organizations).
platform capabilities.
Centralized Food Data: Consolidates millions of product records into a single platform for easy access, comparison, and reporting.
Smart Product Search & Filtering: Quickly find products that meet health, safety, and dietary guidelines without manual research.
Streamlined Ordering & Integration: Simplifies ordering workflows by integrating with existing systems, reducing errors and saving time.
Intuitive & User-Friendly Design: Clear navigation and interface tailored for users of all technical skill levels, enhancing adoption and efficiency.
the challenge.
Designing for diverse users like chefs, school nutritionists, and distributors meant supporting very different workflows, permissions and priorities within one system.
The platform needed to handle complex regulations, product comparisons, and FDA submissions while remaining intuitive and efficient.
Balancing flexibility and usability required a clear information architecture, a scalable design system, and continuous iteration driven by user feedback.
how might we?
simplify food purchasing decisions by enabling users evaluate products across multiple nutrition guidelines, and manage users, roles, and licenses within a single, unified platform?
roadblocks and approach
While designing for a multi-user enterprise tool, we encountered three core challenges:
Enterprise User Management:
Problem: Avoid duplicate accounts for the same organization and differentiate user roles like Admin, Manager, and Regular User.
Approach: Introduced a Super Admin verification step and defined clear permission tiers to streamline user hierarchy.
Consistent User Hierarchy:
Problem: How to maintain a uniform role structure across all subscription models.
Approach: Proposed a base user framework with tiered access rights to ensure consistency in functionality and user control.
Pricing Model Complexity:
Problem: Determining how to price users, by enterprise size or user count.
Approach: Designed a base-tier subscription offering core features and charged per additional user or guideline access.
what our competitors were doing better
Personalized Experiences: Competitors offered customized recipes and shopping lists tailored to individual dietary preferences.
Smart Scanning: Apps like Scan Diet allowed users to scan barcodes to instantly check if a product aligned with their dietary requirements.
Profile Customization: Users could create multiple profiles (e.g., regular, dietary) to define and manage various nutrition needs. Extensive Product Filtering: Competitors provided a wide range of food categories and filters, helping users refine their searches with ease.
where competitors fell short
Limited Focus on Business Needs: Most competitors catered mainly to individual users rather than organizations. They lacked features that supported industry-scale needs such as restaurant groups, food suppliers, or corporate nutrition teams.
Overwhelming User Interfaces: Many platforms presented too many dietary options and filters at once, which often overwhelmed users and made navigation and decision-making more difficult.
what could've worked better
smart feature deep dive.
Visualizing product analysis data would have enhanced user comprehension, but technical limitations at scale made it impractical. Additionally, the platform was solely text-based, as we did not have access to product images — limiting visual engagement. With more backend support and access to visual assets, future iterations could improve usability and clarity.
information architecture
To accommodate diverse account type - individuals, small teams, and enterprises, we mapped detailed flows for signing up, logging in, and managing users and admins within each organization.
This helped us:
1. Clarify the onboarding process across different account types like individual, small team and Enterprise.
2. Design role-based permissions and actions for streamlined account management.
3. Ensure scalable admin controls for enterprise accounts with multiple users.
These flows formed the foundation of the platform’s access structure, simplifying navigation, reducing onboarding friction, and supporting flexible team setups without compromising clarity or control.
wireframe iterations.
I iterated on the design three times, adjusting layouts for better clarity, consistency, and smoother navigation based on feedback and testing
home screen
The Home Screen serves as the entry point to the platform, featuring a smart search bar that allows users to select a category, choose a guideline, enter product keywords, and apply advanced filters, including cultural preferences such as Halal, Kosher, and more, for a personalized and efficient search experience.
product search display
table view
The product search interface adjusts based on user input, such as selected categories, search keywords, and the presence or absence of guideline filters. Results can be viewed in two formats: a table view for detailed comparisons, and a grid/card view for visual browsing.
product search display
card view
The product search interface adjusts based on user input, such as selected categories, search keywords, and the presence or absence of guideline filters. Results can be viewed in two formats: a table view for detailed comparisons, and a grid/card view for visual browsing.
product details.
The Product Details page provides an in-depth view of a selected product, displaying key information such as category, product title, description, GTIN/UPC, nutrition facts, and ingredient details. If a guideline was selected during the search, it also includes a visual analysis indicating whether the product meets the specified standards.
TAKEAWAYS
/Ownership
As lead designer, I took ownership of decision-making and collaborated with developers and product owners to ensure seamless implementation and consistency across web and mobile platforms.
/Problem solving
I learned to adapt quickly, prioritize effectively, and manage tight deadlines. I took a proactive approach to problem-solving, identifying UX issues and providing data-driven, creative solutions to improve usability.
/User centered focus
Building and maintaining a design system and component library taught me the importance of scalability and consistency in design. By conducting user research and competitive analysis, I ensured that the platform remained user-centric while aligning with business objectives.
Airlift me!
Rocket me to the top.