Happy Meal Prep
A white-label platform that lets meal prep businesses sell under their own brand. One shared product runs menus, orders and subscriptions for more than 100 brands.
- Lead Product Designer
- 2018–2025
- Combustion Group
- Live project
- See live project (opens in a new tab)
Strategic Gaps
Small kitchens, too many tools
Meal prep owners cook for a living. Most of them were running menus, orders, delivery and customer messages across separate tools. Every week meant the same manual work and the same mistakes, and growth only made it heavier.
Their customers had a different problem. Menus with no macros, weak filters and vague portions made people guess before they ordered. For a customer who counts protein, guessing is a reason to leave.
The goal was one platform that fixed both sides, and that any business could launch under its own name.
Design Logic
Design for the owner first
The storefront gets the attention, but the back office decides whether a business gets through the week. I designed the operator side for owners with no technical background: publish the menu, sort the day’s orders, print labels, run a promotion. Every screen had to answer one question. Does this take a decision off the owner’s plate?
One product, a hundred brands
Every business needed to look like itself. I kept brand and behavior apart from the start. Colors, type and imagery live in tokens. Layouts and flows stay the same underneath. Launching a new brand means setting up a theme, so the engineering team keeps shipping one product.
Answer the questions before the cart
Calories, protein, carbs and fat sit on every menu card, next to the price. People can compare meals without opening each one. Subscriptions live inside the normal checkout, so ordering again next week is the easiest option on the screen.
The Experience
Impact
Happy Meal Prep is live and runs 100+ meal prep brands on one shared product. Businesses on the platform saw a 3× conversion lift and 75% customer retention, plus 35% average growth in their customer base and a $20 increase in average order value. Figures reported in the original case study.
“Happy Meal Prep has been amazing, it changed the way I run my business.”
Chef Gary, Owner
I designed the product UX and UI and laid the foundation. Happy Meal Prep has kept growing and building on it since.
Reflection
Happy Meal Prep started before the pandemic with only a few businesses on it. When the pandemic hit, meal prep owners needed to sell online fast, and the platform took off. Because the foundation was built to carry many brands from the start, it could grow with that demand instead of being rebuilt for it.
