Pollo Tropical

COVID-19 changed how people wanted to order and pick up their food almost overnight. Dining rooms emptied and drive-thru lines grew.

Fiesta Restaurant Group, the parent company of Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana, asked us to fully redesign the Pollo Tropical app and reimagine curbside pickup inside it: a way for guests to order and get their food without ever leaving the comfort of their car.

I was the senior experience designer responsible for solving how to bring curbside pickup through app ordering to life.

Before designing anything, we went and ordered. Our team observed and secret-shopped eight locations, four Taco Cabanas and four Pollo Tropicals, to feel the experience the way guests did.

Drive-thru lines were consistently stacked, and inside there were 20+ people waiting at lunch. Worse, we went 0 for 5 on getting an accurate order at Pollo Tropical. Sauces and utensils were missing every time.

We mapped the full customer journey, from first hearing about the brand to recommending it, across activities, goals and every touchpoint along the way.

The experience curve made the problem plain. The low points weren't the food. They were committing to a long line, waiting with no idea how long it would take, and finding out at home that something was missing. Curbside had to fix the wait and the accuracy, not just add a new button.

Curbside became the first thing guests saw. Opening the app offers it in a single tap, and when choosing how to receive an order, curbside is selected by default. First-time curbside guests confirm their location before they ever see the menu.

After ordering, a tracker shows each step, from received to prepping to ready, on both the confirmation screen and the home screen. Push notifications follow the kitchen's own timing. When a guest pulls in, crossing a geofence around the restaurant sends a welcome push, and one tap on “I'm here” tells the team they've arrived. Their car's make, model and color are already on the order, so staff know exactly where to walk.

I flagged one risk early: the ready notification is only as reliable as the kitchen's timing. For curbside to work, operations had to own that timing, not just the app.

Curbside shipped in the fully redesigned app, side by side with pickup, delivery and MyPollo rewards, and the launch paid off for guests and the business alike. Online and delivery sales grew 80% year over year, the app grew to more than 100,000 monthly active users, and the redesign contributed to more than 40 months of traffic growth.