Case Study - What The Fork

What The Fork was created to challenge the traditional online ordering model by giving restaurants a fairer, more sustainable alternative. As founder and product owner, my role has been central across the entire business — from shaping the concept and commercial model to defining the platform experience, product roadmap, and wider direction of the company.

The goal from the outset was clear: build a platform that gives restaurants more control over their own orders, customers, and margins, without the excessive commission structures that dominate the market. The core problem was obvious.

Too many hospitality businesses were becoming over-reliant on third-party platforms that take a significant cut of every order while offering limited flexibility and little real ownership. What The Fork was built to offer a better option — one that still gives customers a smooth digital ordering experience, but is far more commercially sensible for the businesses using it.

My role has involved defining how the platform should work from both sides. That includes the restaurant experience, the end-customer journey, the pricing model, and the product features needed to support day-to-day operations.

I have worked across the wider product vision, prioritisation, user flows, feature planning, and platform positioning to make sure the business is not just another ordering tool, but a more strategic solution for hospitality operators. A major part of the work has been shaping the commercial model.

What The Fork has been built around a lower-cost structure that better supports restaurant profitability, combining a capped monthly fee, a small service charge, and a reduced restaurant fee rather than the high commission rates typically seen elsewhere. That commercial structure is a key part of the product itself, because it directly affects adoption, retention, and how the platform is perceived in the market.

Alongside the platform direction, I have also led the wider business positioning. That means thinking beyond the software and into how What The Fork should be marketed, sold, branded, and expanded.

The product had to work as both a practical tool for restaurants and a stronger overall business proposition with room to scale through new operators, new locations, and future service development. From a product ownership perspective, my role has been to keep the platform grounded in real-world operational needs.

Hospitality businesses need simple onboarding, clear pricing, dependable functionality, and tools that support orders without adding friction. Everything in the product direction has been shaped around that principle — keeping the platform useful, commercially credible, and practical for busy operators.

The result is a business and platform that gives restaurants a stronger alternative to the standard food ordering model. What The Fork is not just an app or website; it is a product-led response to a broken pricing structure in hospitality, designed to support operators with a more balanced and sustainable digital solution.

This project reflects a lot of what I do best: identifying a genuine market problem, building a product around it, and shaping the business, commercial model, and platform experience together rather than treating them as separate pieces.