SESH: Navigating Business Hurdles with Technology
The zeitgeist of the 21st century has been of how technology has evolved to improve every facet of our lives. Human beings have never been more connected to each other than they are now. Knowledge and information have never been as accessible to us as they are now. Businesses have the power to transcend commercial, logistic, and strategic boundaries by engaging in innovative practices.
SELISE Digital Platforms is committed to empowering businesses that want to embrace innovation. One such company is SESH, a restaurant that is a concern of the Swiss gastronomy and hospitality giant SV Group. SESH excels in concocting delectable bowls of salads that are the perfect meal for those who are health conscious and seek a balanced diet without having to sacrifice taste and enjoyment. Alongside a set menu, customers are able to choose to customize their own bowls by selecting elements from a wide variety of protein, greens, grains, beans, fungi, dressing, condiments, and almost anything that makes a meal both delicious and nutritious.
Challenging Circumstances
Since SESH’s launch in February 2020, the Wallisellen based diner has gotten a positive reception. However, the defining phenomenon of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, inevitably posed a daunting challenge to SESH’s operations. Nationwide lockdowns resulted in the eatery having to temporarily close down, with physical gatherings prohibited.
As with the rest of the restaurant and hospitality industry, SESH was suffering financially, with there being virtually zero scopes to earn revenue. Facing curveballs and figuring out a way to tackle them is part of what it means to run a business, but for a hurdle as formidable as the pandemic, SESH had to rethink their business model and how they reach their customers.
Online platforms have thrived in wake of the pandemic, and never has there been such a strong impetus to shift business processes to the digital sphere. It appeared to be the right move for SESH to decide to add home delivery to their service offerings.
Therefore, SESH would need to host a digital platform in which customers could place their orders. However, a core aspect of the SESH experience is for a customer to be able to customize her/his own bowl and choose from SESH’s numerous ingredients. For the customer, eating at SESH used to be like designing her/his own meal, without having to cook it. Preserving this unique element of SESH’s service would prove to be an uphill task. The current website SESH operated did not have the necessary foundations to implement this feature. SELISE Digital Platforms offered a solution that not only revamped SESH’s existing website to make it look more aesthetically pleasing, but also integrated a comprehensive customer order portal that emphatically reinforces SESH’s Unique Selling Point: customization, modularity, and superior customer service.
Overcoming the Hurdle
The new website and webshop developed by SELISE immediately catch the eye with stunning visuals. Customers that want to order at home or at their workplace are taken through an intuitive step-by-step process in which they select the ingredients of their bowl, with appropriate pictures displayed to give the customer a proper understanding of what their food will look like. Furthermore, customers are able to make specifications on their drink orders, such as what kind of sweetener they would want on their coffee, or whether they want milk or not.
Customers are even allowed to save their orders for the future so that they do not have to create the same bowl from scratch – which is done by signing up on the SESH website and creating a customer account. Crucially, customers can input their allergy information, so that SESH chefs can take extra care when preparing their orders.
Given the complexity of the platform, SELISE is proud to have been able to provide this solution within 5 months after talks with SESH were finalized. The SESH platform has been up and ready since March 2021, and the results are promising. The restaurant is now able to add a new dimension to their business, one which will surely allow them to reach more customers and bolster their bottom line. Embracing innovation is a rewarding process for businesses and companies, and SELISE is always there to be by their side along this process.