Restaurant Owners:

Hames Jarden

Hames Jarden is a 35-year-old male owner of a well-known sports bar and steakhouse in Scarborough. A substantial number of customers frequent his place, enjoying delicious steaks and sports talk. Due to the COVID-19 situation, he can only offer takeout which is taking away the appeal of his bar. One of Hames' pride is being able to interact with his customers and build a connection through a common ground. Not being able to connect and share his stories with his customers makes it harder to attract customers to his bar. This greatly frustrated Hames as his once knit-tight community was no longer there. As a single father, Hames has found it increasingly difficult to support his two daughters, as his bar was his only source of income. He knows how to use technology efficiently as his bar uses an iPad to place orders and to assign seating. Hames has never used online platforms and is looking into online platforms for the first time where he can offer seamless pick-up or delivery and can recreate the community he used to have before the pandemic.

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Robert Downey

Robert Downey is a 28-year-old male, who is the manager of a small family-owned restaurant named Rob’s Ribs. Rob’s Ribs is owned by his parents, Bill (58 years old) and Julie (55 years old), who are also the chefs. Rob’s Ribs is a seasonal restaurant, so their menu changes approximately every 3 months. Both of Rob’s parents are unfamiliar with technology and the logistics of the business but are very charismatic especially when interacting with customers. Such charisma attracts customers to keep coming back to the restaurant that has such family history, as well as the delicious ribs. Rob, a business (marketing) graduate was hired to handle the logistics and marketing of the restaurant. He has good computer skills using Microsoft Office and has personally used food services such as Skip the Dishes and Uber Eats. He takes pride in his analytic skills to determine the best opportunities for the family restaurant. Rob seeks to increase business to offset the lost profits due to COVID-19. He has considered using apps like Uber Eats and Door Dash but the large percentages fees (20-30%) these companies charge would make it hard for the business to make any meaningful profits.

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Customers:

Steve Hobbs

Steve Hobbs is a 42-year-old male who owns a small business in Scarborough. He has been taking his employees and visiting clients out to lunches weekly since it was a way of creating a sense of community between him and his team. Steve also does this for tax reasons, as it is possible to write off such lunches as tax-deductible business expenses. Steve has decided that he will continue to support his small team during this time, as they remain employed. He takes orders for the entire team and places it into one big order. Steve’s team finds it difficult to meet, so they often end up creating and canceling orders many times before settling on a time where they can all eat together. He finds the cancellation part difficult in current online ordering services after ordering and usually ends up eating the food he couldn’t cancel. Steve is proficient with technology and using computers, mainly from using Excel spreadsheets for work and sending emails to clients and employees.

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Bob Lee

Bob Lee is a 20-year-old male political science student who lives in Scarborough, Ontario. He is very comfortable using technology whether it be writing papers, checking emails, browsing social media or shopping online. Bob has a passion for authentic cuisines and occasionally attempts to cook it at home.  He has used existing food services such as UberEats and Doordash but finds that they lack a variety of Scarborough restaurants and their authentic dishes. Due to the number of papers he has to write he often does not have time to cook for himself so he much prefers being able to order delivery to his front step as it would save him time that can be used for schoolwork. Since Bob enjoys authentic food as opposed to fast food, he likes to know a bit about the restaurant and their culture before ordering. He is much more likely to order if pictures of the various dishes are displayed. In addition, he has two younger siblings that are 10 and 15 that he often has to take care of as his parents work long hours so when ordering food, he needs to ensure there is enough for his siblings as well.

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Rachel Lin

Rachel Lin is a 21-year-old outgoing female international management student at the University of Toronto Scarborough and rents a place close to UTSC. Rachel is a foodie and loves to experiment with new cuisines around Toronto all the time. Rachel’s English is acceptable, but her first language is Mandarin and she is also technology literate. During a typical week, Rachel would attend classes and then after a long day’s work, commute to a local restaurant in Scarborough for a nice dinner where she would usually talk to other guests and exchange good restaurants to visit. These restaurants vary greatly between weeks in terms of cuisine or atmosphere. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, Rachel is no longer able to commute due to fear of contracting the virus on the subway. This frustrates her a lot since she enjoyed eating in different environments and talking to different people. Her preference for the in-person, face to face interactions makes her dislike the use of food ordering services. Rachel is now venturing into online cuisine and looking to explore good cuisines.

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Alice Wong

Alice Wong is a 20-year-old female university student living by herself in Scarborough, who orders online delivery often since she cannot cook. She prefers not to leave her house and to do her work in the leisure of her home. Most of her work needs the use of a computer, giving her more reasons not to leave the house; she is also proficient with technology as a result. She is a regular user of existing online delivery apps, such as Uber Eats, and is used to those types of interfaces. Alice likes to experiment and try different foods depending on her mood, making her very indecisive when choosing meals. She also likes to keep track of which dishes that she tried and which dishes she liked the best, so she can go back and support the business again, especially during these hard times. As a university student, Alice’s budget is tight since she has to divide her money for tuition fees, rent and utilities.

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Janet Jackson

Janet Jackson is a 30-year-old female doctor currently working as an essential worker during the quarantine. Janet wants to do as much as she can to help the healthcare system during the pandemic and has picked up long shifts that do not leave her much time to eat. Luckily, Janet has a car to commute to and from work which saves her a bit of time. With her limited amount of free time, she relies on ordering food rather than cooking it. She has moderate technology skills from being able to navigate and order food from the web pages but does not consider herself a technology expert. Also, since Janet wants to limit the spread of any germs she prefers to pay using a debit or credit card rather than cash. Janet considers herself a bit of foodie and likes to express her opinions about restaurants. She is very active on sites like Yelp where she can review foods and rate them accordingly. Although she orders food a lot, Janet does not have a favourable opinion of food ordering services since they have high service fees for both the customers and the restaurants.

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Karen D'Souza

Karen D’Souza is a 60-year-old female who lives with her husband and 2 children in Markham. Unfortunately Karen has several illnesses that restrict her food intake that resulted in her having to be a vegetarian for 5 years now. Her entire family also has dietary restrictions, for instance, they only eat halal or organic food. Due to the variety of dietary restrictions present in her family, she finds it too hard to cook a variety of dishes that fit each of the dietary restrictions. Instead, she would like it if she was able to order food from restaurants that cater to a specific diet as it would ease her headache of cooking dishes. Karen is hesitant to use food ordering services as she would prefer to go to the restaurant itself to order pickup. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has left her with no choice but to use food ordering services as she has trouble commuting as her family only has one car. She is hesitant to use food ordering services because she has minimal interaction with technology; Karen mainly relies on her children to do tasks such as paying bills. She is worried that the food ordering process is too complex and that she would not have a meal ready for her and her family.

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Administrators:

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Al Capone

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Al Capone is a System Administrator who would like to know about how the website is being used. He wants to view statistics and analysis data in real-time to determine the best way to improve the website. Al wants to help the restaurants in Scarborough flourish through the website and tries his best to figure out how to increase traffic with his marketing and statistics knowledge. Al is working from home and collaborating with colleagues from UTSC to think of what these restaurants need from Scarborough Dining to operate a delivery service. Al is highly technically skilled and has been hired to maintain the website. Al has previously worked at food ordering companies such as Skip the Dishes so he is familiar with the operational logistics of the business. In his free time, he also orders food from these mobile applications as he finds it convenient and simple to use.