Lemon Blog

Gems are earned when customers scan to order using lemon. RM1 = 1 gem, when a customer have enough gems they can unlock gifts from your restaurant that you set.

So why does it matter to your business and how you can take advantage of this?

Back story

We knew we had to create an incentive for customers to scan and make their orders; hence, we needed something but we didn’t want to create a one-sided incentive tool. It is our believe that everything we build has to have benefit to both parties.

We researched 3 companies Manis, Zap and Mulah and frankly I couldn’t believe how much they charge. It came down to 2 models: Universal points or Individual points. Bonuslink and Manis uses universal while Zap and Mulah uses individual, each have their pros and cons.

Universal Points‘s

Pros:

Customer focused.

Points can be used around easily.

Great selections for customers

Cons:

Isn’t beneficial to merchants

Applicable to merchants with money to splash

It’s not merchant friendly.

Individual Points’s

Pros:

Merchant benefit customer retention.

Customers are rewarded to places they go frequently.

Win-win situation

Cons:

Selection might not be compelling for customers

Requires more work for customer acquisition

Not as customer focused.

We had to make a decision and we chose Individual points because

The concept was straight forward.

We wanted to build something our partners can leverage on without paying a lot for something easy to build.

It’s proven.

so it took us 3 days to build a prototype and launched a test in a week.

How can it help my business?

80/20 rule. 80% of your profits is contributed by 20% returning customers. It’s impossible to capture 100% returning customer in any industry but what you want is 20% of your customer contributing to 80% of your profits.

Retention is the name of the game. Allowing customers to get some rewards for their visit would help with retention and it’s already proven.

Increase customer return to your business easily by providing attainable rewards.

Okay, I’m interested! What should I do?

Already a Lemon partner?

Email the rewards you want us to put in.

Interested in becoming a Lemon partner?

Rewards is here on Lemon. Earn Lemon points for every RM1 spent = to 1 Lemon points at our partners restaurants. 

Rewards is now currently supported at: Aboong SS15

Alchemist Dessert Cafe

Epicuro USJ

Scuba G Cafe

AMPM Cafe

Big Hug Burger

Bytes and Pixels

Owee by Sayang Manis

Souka Cafe

Upstairs Cafe.

I believe the F&B industry or any business for that matter isn’t any different in terms of growth. Everyone of us hope that our new restaurant or cafe would start attracting customers with a new concept or product, we’re lucky if it happens in weeks or months but some take years before they hit it big.

Grab as you may know started as “myteksi”

“First, when we started in 2012, not everyone wanted to work with us. Most people could not see how this new kid on the block could be a partner instead of a competitor. I remember having to go door to door to convince people to join us, be it fleet companies, driver-partners, or even the early team of Grabbers who had no idea where this start-up would lead them”

Co-founder/CEO Anthony Tan of Grab. Full read here

It took 5 years for myteksi to become Grab, I wasn’t an overnight success but a 5 years making of success.

Why did it take Grab so long to reach this stage? Like all new and innovative ideas, people need time to discover it’s usefulness; hence, patience is key.

Airbnb is my personal favourite story on pure grit. Most of us know or use Airbnb but do you know how they started? I’ll try to summarise everything in 2 paragraphs.

Airbnb has 3 co-founders Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk, they started Airbnb back in 2008. They had to sell cereal boxes to raise their funding initially of $30k which they admitted it was a pretty low point in their life.

Airbnb didn’t start growing until 2011 which took them a gruelling 3 years. Many investors who turned them down were the best in the industry, some invested in giant tech companies but they failed to see the grit these founders had and was too consume with the numbers.

Why did it take Airbnb so long to reach this stage? Like many people, it was scepticism to the idea of staying in someone else home but when the whole home-sharing idea went mainstream Airbnb officially blew up.

So why new things takes time to grow?

I believe as business owners we do whatever we can to accelerate the process, myself included but over the years I came to understand several factors why new, takes time and it applies to anything literally.

1. Majority people are Pragmatic

I believe this applies to everything not just tech. New things are targeted to a specific niche that might or might not go main stream. Things will only start gaining traction be it a restaurant, cafe, business or startup when there’s a common acceptance of the product which happens to be PMF (product market fit)

What to do here? Be patient but aggressively swift, it took Grab and Airbnb 3 years +

2. Instability

This sides with technology, most people usually identify new with unstable or buggy which I can attest to that. The early prototype of Lemon was buggy as hell and the early product was also buggy. This bugginess turns people off really really fast, I know that because I’ve seen it with my own eyes confronting a customer.

What to do here? Apologize to your customers and make sure the problem never surface again.

3. EVERYTHING comes down to Product Market Fit

Most new products fails because they inherently fail to achieve PMF which is what every company strives to achieve. F&B PMF would be the menu, always striving to achieve different taste, adapting to different style and creating different products. As for a tech company, it’s all about acquiring usefulness over the product.

Paul Graham co-founder of Y combinator said

“Don’t be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that’s a good sign. That’s probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.”

Full essay here

What to do here? If things doesn’t work out, pivot.

Dessert

I remember this phrase “Malaysian are not adventurous enough to download new apps to try” a very common perception around here but I believe it’s not a ‘Malaysian thing’ it’s a people thing. People only want to download things that they know it’ll be useful to them, period.

Problem is, the world we live in is a very noisy one. Apps to download everywhere at every corner, it’s natural for people to block the noise until something speaks to them. Most big companies have the budget to spend on advertising but some fail to recognise that people will only stay if it’s truly useful.

My last point is “new things has to achieve usefulness”. Useful products like Grab and Airbnb took time but steadily grew, companies that grow super fast ends up dying super fast as well, if one doesn’t figure out what customers really need.

My job at Lemon is to make sure we build products that are useful for our partners and users. I’m certain if we focus on making the best products and making it useful; growth will come and we are growing steadily.

Self-sponsored ad:

Lemon is an app on iOS that allows you to order anywhere without waiting in restaurants and cafes.

Great use case:

When you are waiting for a waiter/waitress.

When you are reading.

When you are smoking/vaping/shishaing

When you are in a meeting but want to order without the awkwardness.

When you do not want to be disturbed.

When you are playing boardgames in a cafe.

Download here

We added directions up front so it’s easier to get to your desired restaurants and cafes. Soon, ETA will be included as well.

“Good design is as little design as possible” — Dieter Rams

Just a general PSA, this is a general design process which has some values that may or may not differ from the industry, enjoy.

The main reason I’m writing this is to document the design process taken to bring Lemon to market and provide an awareness that we do emphasise on design just as much as engineering and business.

User Experience

The key thing to note when designing a user experience that changes user behaviour is to study behaviours through observation, being very present with what users are doing is paramount. We observed how long it took customers to order, eat and pay.

The goal of any product is to figure out touch points of friction and where the magic moment lies.

Friction: Always figure out places where it’s causing user an annoyance or pain. Why it’s important?: You’ll figure out the direction of your UI pretty easily. Lemon’s friction: Decision making and distance.

Magic Moment: This is where your customers face lights up in surprise. Why it’s important?: Capitalize on parts where customers are delighted and then double down on it. Lemon’s Magic Moment: Ordering.

Old Sketch of Lemon

User Interface

Old menu design

New menu design

There were plenty of UI iteration before this, like a lot. We tried grid, masonry and many more styles but we felt the 2x2 portrait way would be the de-facto design for the menu section.

Color Palette

Version 1 color palette.

Version 2 color palette

Version 1 color palette: We replicate the color of an actual Lemon; hence, the yellow and green.

Yellow: PANTONE 109 C Green: PANTONE 7487 U Blue: PANTONE 2175 C Black: PANTONE PROCESS BLACK C

Version 2 color palette: We removed yellow after feedback of Lemon perceived more of a health app than a mobile ordering app.

Changes made: Increased the contrast the both the green and blue but we reduce the contrast of the black to give a more ash black feel.

Green: PANTONE 2271 C Blue: PANTONE 2132 C Black: PANTONE XGC

Blue and Green are our main UI color, why?

Differentiation Most food apps goes with the red or orange hue but we decided to replace the yellow with blue and mix it with green and it worked.

Function first Blue represent function and security while green represents ease of use and progression.

Unisex A research did by Kissmetrics said that blue and green individually as colors are loved by both sex.

The Infatuation They provided us inspiration to go down this color way.

Animation

Animation on app should be used sparingly on occasion where we want to convey deeper meaning of a feature. We realised a simple animation can invoke a feeling of achievement for the user, sometimes the small things pays.

Font

Lemon uses Apple’s native SF font however, we originally wanted to use Proxima Nova or Circular as our standard font but we decided to stick with SF.

Tools used

Prototyping

We use a lot of Principle to prototype and for video purpose. I occasionally use Framer when there are things I can’t do on Principle.

UI/UX

We use Sketch a lot! like a lot to do all our designs, icons and wallpapers. Photoshop is mainly used for gifs and mp4 conversions, while Illustrator is used for CMYK print materials.

Animation

Airbnb released Lottie an open source real time animation rendering for After Effects. I use After Effects to create animation which will be exported through Lottie as a json file.

Video

I use final cut pro to edit any videos that is needed from my iPhone.

Desserts

There are many more processes that went into this but I believe we’re still far from our mission and the eventuality of our product design, heck even now we’re already changing parts of the UI/UX.

Our dream is to build a company that values great design not just engineering. Engineering is highly valued anywhere in the world but marrying design serves different aspect that engineering will never fill.

Phoenix Court 601 Room CChinese New Year 2016 Poster for Bristol MuseumLemon wallpaperShe is a Malaysia Artist and Illustrator graduated from Bristol, U.K. that I met at The Coffee and Bar. She helped to create the “Celebrate Design” wallpaper for Lemon Sessions, she’s able to create illustration needed for menus or mural on walls or any graphic/illustration work needed

Do check out more of her work here.

Instagram: @wendykhy

Lemon wallpaper

Chinese New Year 2016 Poster for Bristol Museum

61 Ashton Road, Bristol

Nyonya House

Phoenix Court 601 Room C

Grotta Palazzese

ℹ︎ The grotta — Italian for ‘cave’ — is part of the Grotta Palazzese hotel, which is located above and built from local stone. Dub as the “Most Romantic Restaurant in Italy”. The restaurant is only open from May to October.

Brief History:

The setting also provided a feast for the eyes for local nobility during grand banquets at the restaurant as far back as the 1700s.

Design attribute: The Best: The lamps are movable by design, most scenic food places use candles as light source. It’s romantic but not functional, the dim lamp here provides the romantic vibe with light source.

💰 RM498/head

📍Narciso, 59, 70044 Polignano A Mare BA, Italy

La Parada del Mar

ℹ︎ The newest member of the Harbour House Group, La Parada occupies a prime spot on Camp’s Bay Beach, overlooking its powder-white sands and the glistening Atlantic Ocean. The two-storey restaurant features a small outdoor terrace to watch the world go by whilst enjoying the sun on your face and a healthy breakfast, and a mosaic-clad bar inside; offering a comprehensive wine and gin menu.

Design attribute: The Best: Consistent and different usage of patterns throughout the whole interior.

💰 RM64/head

📍35 Victoria Rd. Camps Bay, 8005

Blue Bottle Coffee

ℹ︎ Opening a roastery in Kiyosumi, one of Tokyo’s starker and more industrial corners, felt like a perfect fit for us. Not only were we taken with the passion and dedication of Japanese kissaten culture in general, we’ve also developed a fondness for unknown and exciting urban nooks.

Our 7,000-square-foot roastery comprises an elegant and angular two stories and houses a cupping room, production space, Loring SmartRoaster, pastry kitchen, administrative offices, and (of course) a coffee bar.

We’re thrilled to serve a brand new audience of Japanese guests a menu that’s both familiar and updated: espresso drinks, single origin and blends as drip coffee, iced coffee, and pastries. We’ve got a crew of native Japanese baristas — along with a handful of California expats — that we’re confident are the best in the business.

Brief History:

Blue Bottle Coffee (from Oakland, California) opened their first roastery/café in Japan, to operate as the production base of Blue Bottle Coffee Japan. Schemata Architects was commissioned to renovate the former storage building at Kiyosumi-Shirakawa in Tokyo to accommodate roastery, cafe, office, barista training room and pastry factory. Blue Bottle Coffee is a leader of the third-wave coffee companies; they strive to achieve the best flavor and aroma, while promoting fair-trade and improving the labor environment of coffee farms, to construct a balanced production circle and to develop a positive relationship in which baristas and consumers raise awareness and grow up together.

Design attribute: 

The Best: Wide windows that allows natural light using plants indoors to balance out heavy usage of industrial material like steel.

💰 RM17/head

📍1 Chome-4-8 Hirano, Kōtō-ku, Tōkyō-to 135-0023, Japan

Someplace Beautiful

ℹ︎ Someplace Beautiful depicts an imaginary picture of a beautiful holiday with soft white beach, clear blue sky, serene sea breeze, ocean waves kissing the shore line, and wooden house stands afar. While you can’t get this in a KL city full of skyscrapers, you can at least, enjoy the tranquility in this new place called — Someplace Beautiful.

Design attribute: The Best: An installation within the interior, installation of the hexagon tiles with equal proportion of width and length.

💰 RM10/head

📍G17 D7, Jalan Sentul, Sentul, 51000 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur

Arabica

ℹ︎ I was raised by parents who were enthusiasts of a universal language called ‘’Esperanto,’’ and every summer, we attended a World Esperanto Congress held somewhere different in the world. My father owned a trading company, and he often took me on his business trips, so I have been a traveller since I was young.

While seeing so many countries, different cultures, rich and poor people, happy and unhappy people, I often wondered who I was and asked myself what kind of life I wanted to live.

I grew up in Tokyo and after high school, I moved to California. I found a cozy apartment in Venice Beach, where I watched beautiful sunsets every evening, and I indulged myself in the beach and hippie culture.

After college, I started working for a trading company, so I continued travelling overseas on business. A lot was learned while working closely with business owners around the world; seeing their mindset towards work and life. Most of them were very wealthy, but I found that some were happy and others were not, which caused me to keep asking the same two questions:

Who am I? What kind of life do I want to live?

I reflected on these two questions over and over and eventually I found my answers.

・I want to live a simple and down-to-earth life. ・I only need the basics to be satisfied: food, clothing and a house. ・Like my parents did for me, I want to travel with my children and build a higher standard for them.

And my last answer was coffee.

I really need an amazing cup of coffee everyday, and this is why I founded % Arabica.

In order to provide the best coffee possible, I bought a coffee farm in Hawaii, started a green bean trading company, became the sole-exporter of a Japanese roasting machine and the distributor of one of the best espresso machines in the world. Then, together with a world latte art champion, Junichi Yamaguchi, and a talented architect, Masaki Kato, we opened % Arabica in the beautiful historic city of Kyoto.

Our dream is to expand % Arabica to all over the world, so that young baristas can ‘’See the World Through Coffee.’’

We only live once, so let’s explore the world we live in, set goals, and enjoy our time together over an amazing cup of coffee.

Design attribute: The Best: Arabica Coffee fits it’s architecture design along with other building at every location while maintaining the modern sleek interior that sets them apart and obviously the %.

💰 RM13/head

📍3-47, Sagatenryuji Susukinobabacho, Ukyo-ku Kyoto 616-8385 Japan

📍Fujii Daimaru Department Store Shijoteramachi Shimogyo-ku

📍87-5 Hoshino-cho, Higashiyama-ku Kyoto, 605-0853 Japan

and more in

Hong Kong, Kuwait, UAE and Oman

Bonus

Elephant Grounds

ℹ︎ Elephant grounds has grown and become the forefront of the coffee consumer movement, where consumers are migrating to quality, attention to detail and presentation followed by, distinction in taste and a unique experience when selecting their daily coffee. We consider ourselves as locally grown as we embody the spirit of ‘Made In Hong Kong’ throughout our brand.

We hold this concept dear and this is translated into our quality of coffee, Attention to detail in our ice cream and ice cream sandwiches, distinction in taste with our handcrafted bread and a unique experience with the unique and modern design of each shop. In our pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee, our simple purpose and message are to give everyone the best cup of coffee with a smile. Our total operational footprint is approximately 20,000 square feet with outlets located in Sheung Wan, Wong Chuk Hang, Causeway, Wan Chai and our newest location, Central!

Design attribute: The Best: Open spacing! Hong Kong is known for their limited amount of space. By removing windows around, you get extra spacing which worked for them.

💰 RM20/head

📍8 Wing Fung St, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

📍Shop C, G/F, 42-28 Fashion Walk, Paterson St, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

📍11 Gough Street, Central

📍61 Caine Road, Central

📍Shop 609, New Town Plaza, Phase 1 , 18 Sha Tin Centre St, Sha Tin, Hong Kong

Self-sponsored ad

Lemon is an app on iOS that allows you to order anywhere without waiting in restaurants and cafes.

Great use case:

When you are waiting for a waiter/waitress.

When you are reading.

When you are smoking/vaping/shishaing.

When you are in a meeting but want to order without the awkwardness.

When you do not want to be disturbed.

When you are playing boardgames in a cafe.

Download here

P.S. I’m currently writing about Lemon’s Design Process. Do follow us on Facebook or Instagram to stay in the know.

Both company main focus is to get to your destination but notice the difference here:

1. Uber says “Where to?” Grab says “Where are you going?”.

2. Font size

Explanation: *PSA: Obviously both replies applies vice versa depending on individual* Uber’s where to? imply shorter impulses of thoughts so you’ll instinctively think of your destination versus Grab. The more words you use to describe something requires us humans to process the words hence, more thinking. So less thinking = more trips = more money.

Always go for 23-30pt in font size for core feature!

Examples: When your friend says where to? chances are you’ll reply “errr (destination), to (destination)” when your friend says “where are you going?” chances are you’ll reply “umm most likely (destination), I want to go to (destination)”

My 59 y.o dad says he couldn’t find Grab’s “where are you going?”, this matters because of visibility. If an old can see it, a young one will immediately.

Grab = 6 touch red dots v Uber =  4 touch red dots

Explanation: 

More red dots: 

1. More touches 

2. Busy interface

3. Reduce essential feature

Less red dots:

1. Less touches

2. Cleaner interface

3. Better focus

Example: I showed my dad age 59 both Uber and Grab side by side, he found Grab harder to navigate compared to Uber reasoning were obvious.

Dessert

At the end of the day it comes down to PRICE

Both companies provide great value to us consumers but in terms of product, Uber still has the helm. This is a design case study and I’m not bias to Uber because Grab is the preferred choice for startup founders :)

At this stage between the war of these ride hailing services, it all comes down to experience and price. Grab has the price down, all that’s left is the experience part.

Self-sponsored ad: 

Lemon is an app on iOS that allows you to order anywhere without waiting in restaurants and cafes.

Great use case:

When you are waiting for a waiter/waitress.

When you are reading.

When you are smoking/vaping/shishaing

When you are in a meeting but want to order without the awkwardness.

When you do not want to be disturbed.

When you are playing boardgames in a cafe.

Download here

P.S. I’m currently writing about Lemon’s Design Process. Do follow us on Facebook or Instagram to stay in the know.

Book Recommendation

John Simmons - The Invisible Grail.

We heard your feedback. Now Lemon doesn’t require you to sign up to make your orders.

So order away at our partner restaurants and cafes Alchemist Cafe 📍90, Jalan SS 15/4b, Ss 15, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor 

Aboong SS15 📍49, Jalan SS 15/8a, Ss 15, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor

Ampm Cafe 📍11A, Jalan USJ 21/5, Usj 21, 47630 Subang Jaya, Selangor

Bytes and Pixels 📍55, Jalan PJS 11/9, Bandar Sunway, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor

Epicuro USJ 📍Taipan Business Centre, 2, Jalan USJ 10/1, Subang Jaya, 47620 Subang Jaya, Selangor