User Journeys

Journey 1: Dilan Jayawardena - Scaling Amma’s Kitchen for the Digital Age

Dilan runs “Amma’s Kitchen,” a family restaurant in Dandenong that has been serving traditional Jaffna Tamil cuisine for fifteen years. His mother started the restaurant when they migrated from Sri Lanka in 2005, and now Dilan manages it while she still oversees the kitchen. The restaurant has loyal local customers, but Dilan knows that to secure the family legacy, he needs to reach the broader Sri Lankan diaspora across Victoria.

When CurryDash approaches him about joining the platform, Dilan is skeptical. He’s tried UberEats before and found the commission fees devastating and the generic menu presentation insulting to his mother’s recipes. But CurryDash is different - they understand that his grandmother’s Christmas mutton curry recipe isn’t just another “lamb curry” to be buried in a category.

Opening the vendor portal for the first time, Dilan is surprised by how intuitive it feels. He creates his first curry pack - “Amma’s Family Feast” - with the configuration builder that lets him offer choices exactly as he would in the restaurant: choose your protein, select your spice level from “Melbourne mild” to “Jaffna fire,” pick three sides from his mother’s famous array of sambols and mallums. The system even lets him add seasonal availability for his Christmas mutton, which he can only source in December.

The breakthrough moment comes during the first Deepavali after joining CurryDash. The subscription forecasting dashboard shows him that 47 families have pre-ordered his festival pack for the following week. For the first time, he can tell his mother exactly how much to prepare, reducing the usual festival food waste by half. When he checks his monthly analytics, Dilan sees that his average order value has increased by 35% compared to his previous delivery platform, and the “Jaffna fire” spice level has a surprising cult following among non-Sri Lankan customers in Carlton.

Six months later, Dilan is training his nephew on the vendor portal. Amma’s Kitchen now has a 4.8 rating with reviews specifically praising the authenticity - something that never happened on UberEats. His mother finally admits that maybe this “computer food ordering” isn’t so bad after all.

Journey Requirements:

• Package configuration builder with options, spice levels, sides
• Seasonal availability settings
• Subscription forecasting dashboard
• Performance analytics with order value, ratings, trends
• Multi-user access for family business/training
• Cultural authenticity in menu presentation

Journey 2: Amara Wickramasinghe - From Home Kitchen to Cloud Kitchen

Amara is a 34-year-old accountant who arrived in Melbourne from Colombo three years ago. During the pandemic, she started cooking Sri Lankan comfort food for homesick friends and colleagues, and her hoppers and curry became legendary in her apartment building. Everyone keeps telling her she should start a business, but the idea of opening a restaurant feels overwhelming - the rent, the staff, the regulations.

One evening, scrolling through a Sri Lankan community Facebook group, she sees a post about CurryDash’s new vendor program specifically designed for home-based and cloud kitchen operators. The post mentions self-service onboarding and no upfront fees. Amara decides to take the leap.

Starting the registration at 9 PM after putting her kids to bed, Amara is guided through a simple step-by-step process. She enters her business details, uploads photos of her kitchen for the food safety check, and provides her ABN and insurance documents. The system immediately tells her what’s missing - she needs a specific council permit - and even provides a link to apply. By 10:30 PM, her application is submitted.

Two days later, Amara receives a notification that her application is being reviewed. She can see the status in her vendor dashboard - “Document Verification” with a green checkmark, “Kitchen Assessment” showing “Scheduled for Thursday.” An admin named Sarah has left a comment welcoming her and asking if she needs help with anything.

The kitchen assessment happens over video call - much easier than she expected. Sarah explains the platform’s quality standards and walks her through the menu setup. Amara creates her first listing: “Amma’s Hopper Kit” - a DIY pack with batter, accompaniments, and her grandmother’s recipe card. The system suggests pricing based on similar items and delivery zone costs.

Her first order comes on a Friday evening - a subscription for weekly hopper kits from a young family in Box Hill. The mother’s message says, “My kids refuse to eat the store-bought ones. Thank you for bringing real hoppers to Melbourne.” Amara cries while packing the order. Three months later, she’s processing 40 orders per week from her home kitchen and is looking at commercial spaces to expand.

Journey Requirements:

• Self-service registration with clear step-by-step guidance
• Document upload and verification tracking
• Application status visibility with admin communication
• Video assessment scheduling integration
• Menu setup wizard with pricing suggestions
• First order celebration/guidance experience
• Status notifications (email, push, SMS)

Journey 3: Kasun Perera - The Dinner Rush Manager

Kasun is 22 years old and works as the evening shift manager at Amma’s Kitchen. He’s Dilan’s nephew, studying business at Monash during the day and running the restaurant floor from 4 PM to close. He doesn’t care about analytics or long-term strategy - he just needs to get through the dinner rush without any orders going wrong.

It’s Friday evening, 6:47 PM, and the restaurant is filling up with dine-in customers when Kasun’s tablet starts pinging. Three CurryDash orders arrive simultaneously - a subscription fulfillment for the Perera family (they order every Friday), a new customer’s first order with a note “EXTRA SPICY please, I’m Sri Lankan!”, and a complicated custom curry pack with multiple dietary modifications.

Kasun glances at the order dashboard - everything is color-coded. The subscription order is highlighted in blue (regular customer, knows what to expect), the new customer order has an orange “First Order” badge (extra attention needed), and the modified order has yellow tags showing the specific changes from standard. He taps “Accept All” and the orders automatically queue to the kitchen display with preparation priority.

While the kitchen works on the orders, another notification: the delivery driver for the first order will arrive in 12 minutes. Kasun taps the order to mark it as “Preparing” - the system automatically notifies the customer and the driver. When his aunt finishes the subscription order, he marks it “Ready” and sees the driver’s location approaching on the mini-map.

Then something goes wrong. The customer with the “EXTRA SPICY” request calls - he received the wrong spice level. Kasun’s heart sinks, but the dashboard shows exactly what happened: the kitchen had queued it correctly, but the packaging was swapped. He can see the order details and immediately initiates a replacement, with the system generating a partial refund automatically. The customer receives a push notification explaining what happened and that a new order is being prepared.

By 9:30 PM, the rush is over. Kasun does his shift handover by reviewing the night’s stats on the dashboard - 23 orders processed, 22 on time, 1 issue resolved with customer satisfied. He screenshots the summary for Dilan, who’s at home for once, and hands off to the closing team.

Journey Requirements:

• Real-time order dashboard with color-coding and badges
• Batch accept functionality for multiple orders
• Order status workflow (accept, preparing, ready)
• Driver ETA and location visibility
• Kitchen display system integration
• Issue resolution workflow with automatic refund
• Shift handover summary and reporting
• Mobile-responsive for tablet use

Journey 4: Sarah Mitchell - Guardian of Platform Quality

Sarah has been the Operations Lead at CurryDash for eight months. Before this, she managed restaurant partnerships for a hotel chain, but she was drawn to CurryDash’s mission of connecting the Sri Lankan diaspora with authentic cuisine. Her job is to ensure that every vendor on the platform meets quality standards and that customers have consistently excellent experiences.

Monday morning, Sarah opens her admin dashboard with a coffee. The overnight summary shows: 3 new vendor applications pending, 2 vendors with declining ratings flagged for review, and 1 customer escalation about a hygiene concern. She sorts by priority - the hygiene complaint first.

The complaint includes a photo of packaging that looks damaged. Sarah pulls up the vendor’s profile - “Spice Route Kitchen” in Footscray - and sees this is their first complaint in three months of operation. She checks the order details, delivery driver notes (nothing unusual), and weather that day (heavy rain, could explain damaged packaging). She drafts a message to the vendor asking for their packaging process and schedules a quality check video call. The system tracks everything in a case file.

Next, the vendor applications. Sarah reviews Amara’s application - documents are complete, insurance verified, ABN checks out. The kitchen photos look clean and organized. She schedules the video assessment for Thursday and adds a welcome note. The second application is missing food safety certification - she sends an automated request with clear instructions. The third application concerns her: the menu descriptions are copied from another platform and the “authentic Sri Lankan” claim is paired with photos that look distinctly North Indian. She flags this for cultural authenticity review and adds notes for the community advisor to check.

The afternoon brings a different challenge: “Curry House Victoria” has received five 2-star ratings in the past week, dropping from 4.3 to 3.8. Sarah pulls up the feedback themes - “portion sizes shrinking,” “less flavor than before,” “not the same as our first order.” She recognizes the pattern: cost-cutting that sacrifices quality. She schedules a vendor success call, preparing talking points about long-term customer retention versus short-term savings.

By end of day, Sarah has processed 3 applications, resolved 2 quality issues, and saved one declining vendor from a spiral that would have ended in suspension. Her dashboard shows the week’s platform health metrics - 94% positive ratings, 0 critical incidents, 12 new vendors in the pipeline.

Journey Requirements:

• Priority-sorted admin dashboard with overnight summary
• Customer complaint workflow with case management
• Vendor profile with complete history and metrics
• Document verification and status tracking
• Video assessment scheduling
• Automated request templates for missing information
• Cultural authenticity flagging and review workflow
• Vendor performance trending and alerts
• Vendor success intervention workflow
• Platform health metrics dashboard

Journey 5: Raj Naidoo - The Problem Solver

Raj works from home in Cranbourne as a part-time customer support agent for CurryDash. He handles the afternoon shift, which covers the pre-dinner surge when customers are placing orders and vendors are ramping up operations. His background as a former restaurant manager means he understands both sides of every complaint.

At 3:15 PM, his first ticket arrives: a customer claiming they never received their order but were charged. Raj opens the case and immediately sees the full picture - order timeline, vendor confirmation, driver GPS tracking, and delivery photo. The photo shows the food at a door, but the customer’s address notes say “Unit 4” and the photo clearly shows “Unit 1” on the door. Mystery solved: wrong unit. He contacts the delivery partner for confirmation, processes a full refund for the customer, and sends a polite note with delivery instructions for next time.

The next ticket is trickier. A vendor, “Lakshmi’s Kitchen,” is furious because a customer left a 1-star review claiming the food was “inauthentic” and “not real Sri Lankan food.” Lakshmi, who has been cooking Sri Lankan food for 40 years, is devastated. Raj reads the customer’s review carefully - they’re comparing it to a different regional style. He responds to the public review explaining regional variations in Sri Lankan cuisine (the platform allows vendor response), flags the review for the community team to add educational context, and calls Lakshmi personally to reassure her. He also adds a note to her vendor profile suggesting she specify “Sinhalese-style” in her menu descriptions.

At 5:30 PM, a subscription billing issue comes in. A customer has been charged twice for their weekly curry pack. Raj investigates - it’s a system glitch where the subscription renewed while the customer was also placing a one-time order. He processes the refund immediately, credits the customer’s account with a 10% discount code as an apology, and escalates the bug to the tech team with detailed reproduction steps.

By 7 PM, Raj has closed 14 tickets with a 96% satisfaction rating. He flags two systemic issues for the product team and adds three entries to the knowledge base for common questions. His shift notes mention the subscription billing bug as high priority.

Journey Requirements:

• Ticket queue with full context (order, vendor, customer, delivery)
• GPS tracking and delivery photo access
• Refund and credit processing tools
• Public review response capability
• Vendor communication tools (call, message)
• Bug/issue escalation workflow
• Knowledge base contribution
• Performance metrics (tickets, satisfaction, resolution time)
• Shift notes and handover

Journey 6: David Chen - The Platform Architect

David is CurryDash’s technical co-founder. While he spends most of his time writing code, he’s also the super admin who handles system configuration, user management, and the occasional data export for investor reports. He built the original platform on StackFood and is now overseeing the transformation into CurryDash’s distinct identity.

It’s the first Monday of the month - investor report day. David opens the super admin console and generates the platform metrics export: total GMV, active vendors, customer retention cohorts, and subscription growth. The system packages everything into a formatted spreadsheet that matches their investor template. One click, five minutes saved.

His next task is onboarding the new marketing lead, Priya. He creates her admin account, assigns the “Marketing” role (read access to customer analytics, write access to promotions, no access to vendor financials), and triggers the welcome email with login instructions. The role system means he doesn’t have to manually configure each permission.

Then a Slack message from Sarah: “Need to add a new vendor category for ‘Cloud Kitchen’ separate from ‘Restaurant’ - changes some onboarding requirements.” David opens the system configuration panel and creates the new vendor type with its associated document requirements (no shopfront photos needed, but additional kitchen safety certificate required). He sets it to “Draft” so Sarah can review before it goes live.

At 3 PM, a support escalation reaches him directly: a vendor claims their payout is wrong. David opens the vendor’s financial ledger - a complete audit trail of every transaction, commission deduction, and payout. He finds the issue: a manual adjustment was applied incorrectly last month. He corrects it, triggers a catch-up payment, and documents the fix with before/after screenshots for audit purposes.

His final task is the quarterly security review. He exports the user access log showing every admin action for the past 90 days, reviews for anomalies (none found), and updates the audit documentation. The platform is ready for the next phase of growth.

Journey Requirements:

• Platform metrics dashboard with export to common formats
• User management with role-based access control
• Role template system with permission bundles
• System configuration panel for business rules
• Vendor type management with conditional requirements
• Financial audit trail with complete transaction history
• Manual adjustment and correction tools
• Comprehensive audit logging
• Security review and access log exports

Journey 7: Nisha Patel - The Vendor Accountant

Nisha runs a small accounting practice in Springvale that specializes in hospitality clients. Five of her clients are now CurryDash vendors, and she spends every month-end reconciling their platform earnings with their business accounts. She’s not a daily user, but she needs reliable access to financial data.

It’s the 3rd of the month, and Nisha is preparing GST returns for her clients. She logs into the first vendor account - Dilan’s Amma’s Kitchen - using the accountant access he granted her. The dashboard shows her only what she needs: financial reports, payout history, and tax documentation. No menu management, no order details (privacy), no settings.

She downloads the monthly statement: every order with date, value, commission deducted, and net amount. The GST is broken out clearly - on both the order value and the commission (which she can claim back). The format matches her accounting software’s import template perfectly, saving her 30 minutes of data manipulation.

For one vendor, the numbers don’t match their bank statement. Nisha opens the payout history and sees the issue immediately: one payout was delayed due to a bank detail error and shows as “Pending” rather than “Completed.” She advises her client to update their bank details and moves on.

Her final task is preparing the tax summary for the financial year. She downloads the annual statement for each client, which includes the platform’s ABN (for GST credit claims), total earnings, total commissions, and a breakdown by month. Everything she needs for the tax return in one document.

At the end of her CurryDash work, Nisha sends feedback through the accountant portal: “Please add a batch download option so I can get all five client statements at once.” Three weeks later, she receives an email that the feature has been implemented.

Journey Requirements:

• Accountant/delegated access role with limited permissions
• Financial reports with GST breakdowns
• Payout history with status and bank detail issues
• Accounting software-compatible export formats (CSV, XLSX)
• Annual tax summary document generation
• Multi-vendor batch operations for accountants
• Feedback/feature request submission
• Payout status visibility (completed, pending, failed)

Journey Requirements Summary

Critical Path Features (Must exist for core journeys):

• Vendor onboarding (registration, verification, menu setup)
• Order management (accept, prepare, ready, driver tracking)
• Admin vendor management (review, approve, monitor, intervene)
• Financial/payout system (accurate, auditable, exportable)
• Support tooling (tickets, context, resolution, escalation)
• Role-based access control (owner, staff, admin, support, accountant)