meal-kit company
Chefmarket
For more than 3 years, itMegastar has been providing Chefmarket with a fully outsourced IT team — including project managers, business analysts, engineers, developers, UX/UI designers, QA and testing team and devOps, — allowing Chefmarket to focus on their core business.
Leading meal-kit company in the Central and Eastern Europe
Chefmarket.ru assembles and delivers everything required to cook delicious meals at home. All you need to have in your cupboard is: salt, pepper,olive oil and a stove. Chefmarket provides the rest in the quantities you need. Founded in 2012, it is a leading meal-kit company in the CEE, led by the Founder Sergey Ashih (ex. McKinsey&Co) and funded by top tier investors (Mitsui & Co, Elbrus Capital, Addventure). In 2020, the company made over 3,5 million meal-kits and achieved almost 100% YoY growth.
For more than three years itMegastar has been providing Chefmarket with a fully outsourced IT team including project managers business analysts, engineers, developers, UX/UI designers, QA and testing team, and devOps, - allowing Chefmarket more freedom and resources to focus on their core business.
For more than three years itMegastar has been providing Chefmarket with a fully outsourced IT team including project managers business analysts, engineers, developers, UX/UI designers, QA and testing team, and devOps, - allowing Chefmarket more freedom and resources to focus on their core business.
Customer situation
In 2017 Chefmarket started to grow significantly: the complexity of operations grew in relation to increase in procurement, logistics, production, customer service and deliveries. To ensure all operations are efficiently managed and to keep a leadership position among the competitors, IT-solutions were required across all departments to streamline multiple business processes. This was quite a challenge as finding ready-to-use business solutions on the market was not possible.
You could draw parallels with an imaginary restaurant serving tens of thousands of tables, where the menu changes weekly, and each table might be miles away from one another!
To succeed in such a business, speed and precision are crucial in three areas: supply chain, production planning/operations, and customer service/delivery.
You could draw parallels with an imaginary restaurant serving tens of thousands of tables, where the menu changes weekly, and each table might be miles away from one another!
To succeed in such a business, speed and precision are crucial in three areas: supply chain, production planning/operations, and customer service/delivery.
Problem
In 2017 Chefmarket used to have an internal IT team, which developed custom automation solutions. These solutions had dealt with initial business volumes, but had reached maximum capacity. Chefmarket realised they needed external help with IT if they were to continue producing and delivering an increasing number of high-quality meal kits, which was, after all, their core business.
While a certain degree of automation existed in 2017, it was slow, fragmented, somewhat outdated, and didn't facilitate high-speed customisation and ongoing development. If the IT system were not upgraded the company would have reached a dead-end in terms of growth. The Internal IT team had to either be restructured or augmented by an external force.
While a certain degree of automation existed in 2017, it was slow, fragmented, somewhat outdated, and didn't facilitate high-speed customisation and ongoing development. If the IT system were not upgraded the company would have reached a dead-end in terms of growth. The Internal IT team had to either be restructured or augmented by an external force.
Solution
Restructuring a team and hiring is expensive and time consuming, so Chefmarket decided to start with outsourcing some of the elements of their IT infrastructure and business applications to itMegastar. When the outsourcing model was tested on small chunks of functionality and demonstrated excellent results, itMegastar reached an agreement with Chefmarket to allocate a fully dedicated team to specific blocks of business applications.
Product Management was handled by Chefmarket, whereas the rest was fully outsourced to itMegastar team. Such a model offers great convenience and substantial business value as itMegastar takes on responsibility for the team, ensuring quality results are achieved in minimum time and that the capacity is there to handle critical projects as necessary.. Chefmarket bears no additional costs related to hiring, enablement, team management, exprestise, yet achieving top business results within an agreed timeline.
Our company prides itself on its customised approach to each individual client, helping them achieve maximum results with minimum effort.
Product Management was handled by Chefmarket, whereas the rest was fully outsourced to itMegastar team. Such a model offers great convenience and substantial business value as itMegastar takes on responsibility for the team, ensuring quality results are achieved in minimum time and that the capacity is there to handle critical projects as necessary.. Chefmarket bears no additional costs related to hiring, enablement, team management, exprestise, yet achieving top business results within an agreed timeline.
Our company prides itself on its customised approach to each individual client, helping them achieve maximum results with minimum effort.
Results
Chefmarket's IT ecosystem now includes more than ten business applications, covering all value chain steps from procurement, production to customer service and delivery, serving over 3,5 million meal-kits per year in three cities. Having successfully survived the COVID-19 lockdowns, Chefmarket is technologically primed to scale up.
Over more than three years of collaboration, the majority of the Chefmarket's business and customer-facing applications were re-engineered and re-designed by itMegastar. Coming up with an architecture that allows for rapid intervention and scaling while being specifically tailored to a Chefmarket's needs was the underlying idea of the re-engineering project, which was implemented successfully.
Over more than three years of collaboration, the majority of the Chefmarket's business and customer-facing applications were re-engineered and re-designed by itMegastar. Coming up with an architecture that allows for rapid intervention and scaling while being specifically tailored to a Chefmarket's needs was the underlying idea of the re-engineering project, which was implemented successfully.
