Meal kits make healthy eating easier for busy consumers, and have grown in popularity. Globally, the meal-kit delivery industry was valued at over $15 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow annually at a rate of over 17% from 2022-2030.
However, consumers of most meal kits are still faced with 1-2 hours of combined prep and clean-up time.
Co-Founder and CEO David Rabie founded Tovala in 2015, a food delivery service created specifically for people who value their time but seek healthy food options. Their fresh meal delivery service is paired with a “smart oven” that allows easy replication of a culinary experience that’s been perfected in Tovala test kitchens by accomplished chefs.
Their high-level customer experience is made possible through a cutting-edge “scan to cook” feature built into every dish. Each meal comes individually packaged and with the simple scan of a QR code, Tovala’s WiFi-connected smart ovens prepare fresh Tovala Meals in 25 minutes or less.
Having an internet-connected product allowed us to tweak and design cook cycles in our test kitchen and ensure that this oven is actually going to recreate that exact same experience easily in the customer’s home.
Tovala wanted to avoid developing in-house IoT infrastructure for their cloud-connected oven, in order to speed up time-to-market, reduce cost, and to prioritize their market differentiation.
They needed a cooking device that could:
- Eliminate the possibility of user error
- Evolve with Tovala’s growing menu
- Allow for firmware updates that wouldn’t break delivered devices
- Provide customer data insight.
Tovala also sought a technology partner that could help them reliably shuttle all of this data from the oven to the cloud, then plug it into an analytics platform without building custom API integrations for every need.
Tovala’s team chose a suite of Twilio products that accelerated their time to market. Twilio Electric Imp provided out-of-the-box, end-to-end internet connectivity, device hardware, wireless certification, and cloud infrastructure. The Electric Imp-powered microcontroller embedded in each oven allowed Tovala’s cloud to talk directly to the oven and vice versa.
The device can pull cook cycles from the cloud for each customer’s meal, receive firmware updates over-the-air (OTA), and send oven events—such as end-of-cook cycle notifications—to the cloud. Tovala’s team can even prevent an oven from starting the cook cycle for a product that may contain a recalled ingredient or allergen, providing a food safety net that other meal kits cannot. These capabilities allow continuous, remote product improvement, all while the oven sits on a customer’s countertop.
Customers can even create and store their own personally created cook cycles in a convenient mobile application. The app places meal ordering, payment, meal reviews, and menu updates right at consumers’ fingertips. Tovala designed their app to act as more than just a ‘remote’ for the oven. It’s a portal for world-class customer engagement with convenient interaction between the app, the oven, and the consumer.
Tovala uses Segment, Twilio’s customer data platform, to tie oven data together with customer data from various other systems. Segment works hand-in-hand with The Twilio IoT platform’s cloud infrastructure to shuttle oven data to any system of record that Tovala deploys to run their operation.
The customer experience is further personalized with Twilio Messaging. It adds an additional preferred channel for customers to opt into, allowing them to engage through SMS when reviewing or receiving notifications. Additionally, when customers scan a barcode to begin cooking a meal, Tovala can communicate any safety concerns about that meal with the customer in real time – for example, if an ingredient was recalled, Tovala can let that customer know before they begin cooking the meal and well before they begin eating it.
Tovala’s IoT-connected oven has helped to create a complete product ecosystem. By bringing to life the Voice of the Product (VoP) and the Voice of the Customer (VoC), Tovala has been able to combine the two for easy Customer Feedback Management (CFM).
A great example of this partnership’s capabilities comes to life with one of the methods Tovala uses to collect reviews. When a consumer scans a barcode, the oven communicates that event to the cloud. It’s pushed to Segment which prompts a review request to be sent to the consumer in near real-time through their mobile app.
This expeditious review request increases completion and accuracy. The reviews are used by Tovala’s kitchen experts to adjust and further perfect cook cycles and flavors, making the consumer an active participant in product development and menu curation.
The biggest benefit to us has been the product itself. The reliable internet connectivity allows us to craft an incredible product experience across multiple platforms and to change, be reactive and evolve the product as we go. That wouldn’t have been possible without the Twilio platform.
The oven’s connectivity also helps improve customer service. Thanks to the IoT functionality, Tovala’s customer support team gets a real-time, inside look at oven activity. Being able to review log files can help Tovala troubleshoot some issues without the need for a lengthy explanation from customers. This often leads to a more rapid time-to-resolution for customer issues.
Without having to worry about building out IoT infrastructure, Tovala could focus on creating a seamless, interactive customer experience that has led to a 90% meal satisfaction rate and superior retention metrics.
Learn how Twilio Electric Imp, Segment, and Programmable Messaging can bring security, OTA device updates, and customizability for your IoT device. Talk to a Twilio expert now.
Interested in purchasing a Tovala oven? Claim your discount at www.tovala.com/twilio!