At PA Consulting, Good Club asked us to design them a custom pot and box solution for their zero-waste online grocery delivery service. In 14 weeks, we carried out design research, identified insights and proposed some initial design solutions. The output of the project was used to win investment before Good Club rebranded to Dizzie and pivoted their approach with Blond undertaking the final design work. We carried out a range of primary and secondary research to understand the pain points and opportunities associated with refill packaging systems. The research included competitor landscaping, user interviews with delivery drivers, customers and warehouse staff and experience immersion through experiencing the packaging system ourselves. Contrary to a typical, consumer centred design project, the key here was really in the supply chain. The interactions and needs created by the shipping and logistics were largely where our insights were found.

The delivery boxes were carefully designed so everything could nest as efficiently as possible within delivery size constraints, to lower the costs of return shipping. Stacking was also really important for storage within the warehouse. A novel handle solution was proposed to make carrying the boxes indoors more comfortable, that also doubled up as a way to secure the lid. 250 ml, 500 ml, 750 ml and 1 L pots were requested in the brief so we designed them all to have the same diameter lids to lower tooling costs and make the process of packing orders more seamless. The pots also nested so they could be efficiently packed up for returning to the warehouse or washing partner. Our proposed concept was part of a closed loop material system. Broken polypropylene pots and lids could be mixed into low grade, tricky to recycle black plastics to form a jazz plastic box.