Redesigned the restaurant admin panel to fix broken navigation and speed up routine menu edits. It removed key objections during sales demos and let new partners set up their stores without relying on account managers.
The old admin panel was hurting both sales and onboarding. Prospective partners lost interest during demos because the UI looked outdated next to competitors, while signed clients kept getting lost in complex navigation and calling support for basic tasks. On top of that, managers couldn't adjust settings on the fly from a phone, which competitors already allowed.
Through support logs and interviews with restaurant managers, I mapped out where people were getting stuck. Simple daily routines were buried deep in settings, navigation triggers were misleading, and basic tasks like updating store hours took way more steps than they should.
Before designing the widgets, I explored high-level layout mechanics to consolidate the scattered settings. The goal was to find a standard, reusable pattern that would speed up development and make configuration fast. I mapped out three conceptual approaches:
Handles massive amounts of data, but feels too heavy for quick, frequent edits.
Works well for linear onboarding, but forces unnecessary scrolling when jumping between unrelated sections (e.g., from Location to Hours).
Keeps the main restaurant list visible in the background. It allows for quick, isolated edits without a page reload and naturally separates different contexts using tabs.
I chose the Slide-out Drawer after checking in with the dev team. It kept the main list in context for users, proved straightforward to implement on the frontend, and easily scales down to mobile screens.
Instead of one long form, I organized the store settings into four logical tabs: General, Location, Hours, and Payments. This keeps the drawer compact, speeds up navigation between sections, and ensures users always maintain their operational context in the background.
To keep implementation lean and avoid visual clutter, I replaced seven individual day toggles with a single multi-select dropdown. Working closely with engineering, this simplified component saved development effort while freeing up UI space for the pre-order logic below.
For the menu section, I focused on reducing steps for everyday tasks. Clicking a menu row now opens its dish list directly instead of buried settings. I brought price, weight, and availability edits straight into the table, so managers don't have to open full product cards for quick updates. I also added drag-and-drop reordering instead of clicking arrows, placed the "Add Dish" button inside the active category, and introduced hover image previews.
To keep the admin panel functional on mobile without horizontal scrollbars, I converted the restaurant and menu tables into responsive card views. Combined with the drawer pattern, managers can now easily handle daily store adjustments directly from their phones.
We validated the redesign through follow-up interviews and feedback from account managers: