Two-Sided Food Delivery App Design for Diners and Restaurants
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are asked to design a food delivery app in the style of large delivery marketplaces such as Swiggy or Zomato. It is a mobile app for the customers who place orders, but your design also has to account for the service providers on the other side of the platform, chiefly the restaurants that prepare the food. Walk through how you would design the product.
```hint Every order has two customers
An order only goes well when both the diner and the restaurant have a good experience. Choose whose problem you will solve first, then check that your solution does not create a new pain for the other side.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is this a brand-new app entering a market with established competitors, or a redesign of an existing one, and which city or market are we starting in?
- Who handles the last mile: couriers run by the platform, restaurant staff, or customers picking up?
- How will restaurants receive and manage orders: a tablet in the kitchen, a phone, or an integration with their point-of-sale system?
- What should the first release optimize for: order volume, restaurant sign-ups or repeat orders from diners?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Segments on both sides (diners and kinds of restaurants) and a justified choice of which to focus on first.
- Pain points for diners and restaurants traced through a single order, from browsing to delivery and review.
- Solutions prioritized with explicit impact and effort reasoning, ending in a scoped first release.
- Marketplace balance: how a feature for one side affects the other, including couriers if the platform delivers.
- Success metrics with guardrails that cover both diners and restaurants.
### Follow-up Questions
- During the dinner rush, restaurants fall behind and delivery estimates slip badly. What would you change in the product?
- How would you sign up your first restaurants before you have diners, and attract diners before you have restaurants?
- Which signal would warn you that restaurants are unhappy before they leave the platform?
Overview: A product design interview question about building a mobile food delivery app for the customers who order meals while also serving the restaurants that fulfil them. It tests segmentation of both sides of the marketplace, pain-point prioritization, scoping a first release and choosing success metrics with guardrails.