the good kitchen case study

The Good Kitchen

Design thinking @ the good kitchen.

Post author: Irina Varbanova
Post published: 2021-04-09
Post category: How Companies Use Design Thinking
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The Good Kitchen, former Hospitable Food Service, is Holstebro’s organization that prepares and delivers subsidized meals to people who suffer from a reduced ability to function due to illness, age, or other conditions. It is a new type of meal service in Denmark that stands for a modern and user-centered kitchen with a focus on quality and a high level of service. The meal service produces season-inspired traditional dishes, guest menus, as well as homemade pastry and chocolates. All these options allow seniors to choose freely and flexibly what to eat and gives them the possibility to invite guests.

For seniors, the loss of control over food choices was painful and they felt embarrassed of receiving such assistance. Also, eating alone reminded them that their families were no longer around. So, to address these problems, the Municipality of Holstebro conducted a Design Thinking project in cooperation with the Danish innovation and design agency Hatch & Bloom in 2007. The goal was to improve the nutrition of elderly people, so that they no longer receive the same kind of food, regardless of their health condition and choices, and suffer from diseases caused by malnutrition.

Before the project, 60% of the elderly in nursing homes or under supervision were getting the wrong diet and 20% suffered from malnutrition. Due to poor nutritional conditions, the risk of getting a disease is higher. It is also more difficult for seniors to take care of themselves and perform their daily tasks. Besides health problems and low quality of life for the elderly, the government faced a greater economic burden. Also, the problem could intensify as the number of senior citizens grows as well as their demand on food quality and menu variation.

That the project “The Good Kitchen” succeeded can be seen in the increased meal orders and number of customers and the decrease of sickness absence. Since the reputation of the meal service improved, job applications tripled. The customers and the employees were much happier which improved the nutrition of the seniors, and the employees were more motivated and prouder of their work.

How Design Thinking is used to improve the life quality of Denmark’s elderly

Design Thinking is used through three conducted workshops and tools like ethnographic research, mind mapping, analogies, trigger questions, and co-creation. The goal of the workshops was to get a wide range of ideas by inviting representatives from all user groups and interested parties. The different design solutions were developed through systematic iterations between design and feedback studies. The user-friendliness was tested with prototypes and mock-ups. It helped the involved participants ask better questions to develop deep insights into both customers and employees and thus expanded the scope. At the beginning of the project, Holstebro officials and the leaders of the Hospitable Food Service saw the project as straightforward as in their view food and service were already at high quality and only small adjustments of the menu were needed.As the project progressed, the initial scope had to be changed. Through participants’ observation and interviewing (ethnographic research done in the first Design Thinking phase), it became clear that to increase customer satisfaction and to improve the nutrition of the elderly, the problems of the kitchen’s employees had to be considered as well.

Lessons Learned from the Good Kitchen Story

The Good Kitchen Story is a good example of the power of Design Thinking not only in businesses but also in social service. There are several things that we can take away from this case:

Consider and engage with the whole system

When we conduct a Design Thinking project, it is important to engage with the whole system. The system includes everyone involved in the production of the product or the service, which has to be improved. In this case study, for example, the system includes the Danish elderly (current customers, people who had stopped using the service, and people nearing retirement age), the kitchen employees, and Holstebro’s municipal officials. The latter are important decision-makers and needed to be involved to understand the importance of the work and to see the work processes.

Once we’ve identified the system and gained deep stakeholder insights (e.g., by comprehensive ethnographic research), the next step is to invite everyone to derive insights, generate design criteria, and co-create solutions. Speaking of co-creation, a tool especially powerful in social service projects with more than one decision-maker, was very useful in the context of the Good Kitchen. The tool allowed many participants to come together and create the solution that best meets their needs.

Think of the scope as a hypotheses

There is always a challenge when the initial scope of a project has to be changed. Usually, we perceive this change as if we made a mistake. Yet, it signalizes that we’ve learned something about the situation we are investigating. What we can take away from this story is, that if Hatch & Bloom hadn’t expanded the boundaries to include the employees as well, the idea for the Good Kitchen wouldn’t have come to live. The project wouldn’t have been as successful since the work ethic of the kitchen worker wouldn’t have changed.

In a Design Thinking project, where innovation is aimed at, it is important to allow space for changes – mental, financial, and organizational. Therefore, it is important not to get too involved with one solution and one idea, as it can change quickly.

Get feedback along the process

The beginning of the project shouldn’t be the only time you engage closely with the stakeholder you design a solution for. As the project progresses, you should regularly ask for feedback from them so that you can integrate their comments into the solution and don’t have to fix big problems too often. In the case study, feedback cards were introduced, creating an ongoing conversation between employees of the kitchen and the elderly. With time, the employees got to know their customers better and could adapt to their needs and wishes. This caused not only higher customer satisfaction but also improved the self-esteem of the workers as they had the feeling of doing something helpful and meaningful for the seniors.

Ethnography is a very powerful tool for Design Thinking

By now, we know that Design Thinking is about creating meaningful solutions for the customer, yet, without ethnography, we wouldn’t know where to start. We wouldn’t be able to understand where the daily challenges are and which value something has for our stakeholders. We would look at the problem and the solution from our point of view. By observing and listening to the customers, we notice little things that can make a huge difference in our customer’s lives. The Good Kitchen story reveals that different seasonal ingredients can conjure up memories (e.g., the pleasure of having strawberries only in summer and not all year long). Another example is the packaging of the meals. It was first done so that it saved money, yet it then didn’t really allow to eat with someone else, which is a desire of the seniors.

If we take this tool and use it not only in Design Thinking projects but in daily routines, together, we can make the world a better place. When we all start to ask about the feelings and problems of our friends and neighbors, little by little, we can create more caring communities where we can truly help each other and where we don’t only focus on ourselves.

References: More information can be found here.

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How Hatch and Bloom used design thinking to improve food service and create a Better Life?

How Hatch & Bloom viewed the Design Thinking Process for the Good Kitchen Project
Design Thinking Stage 1 of Good Kitchen Project: What Is?
Stage 2 of Hatch and Bloom’s Design Thinking Process: What If

Giving the Kitchen a New Identity

Increased user insight and dialogue, preparation of better meal with good food quality.

Guest menus and kitchen specialties

From improving hospitals/courts/housing systems to remodelling the sitting arrangement, Design Thinking can help businesses find strategic solutions by enabling a seamless and user-satisfaction-centric approach. And we have been proving that by writing blogs about how Design Thinking helped to solve complex problems.

So, here we have got yet another Design Thinking case study for you, which is also known as the good kitchen case study. And this time, it is from Denmark – a country known for exemplary care for its Danish adults.

1,25,000 Danish senior citizens, suffering from reduced ability to function, illness, age, or other conditions, rely heavily on the Municipality of Holstebro to deliver subsidized meals. After a short survey, they found the following problems that required immediate attention:

60% of Danish senior citizens had poor nutrition, while 20% were malnourished.
Due to the poor nutritional conditions, it was getting difficult for the elders to take care of themselves and perform their daily tasks. It also meant that adults were living a deteriorated quality of life, and in the future may require more assistance and support.
The meal service providers were facing an extensive challenge to accommodate the senior’s individual needs and wishes. All the senior citizens received the same kind of food, regardless of their health condition and choices.

After reviewing all these growing social problems, the municipality decided to hire the Danish idea and design agency – Hatch & Bloom. As per the Danish Municipality, high-quality food was already offered to the elderly clients, so the Hatch and Bloom associates thought the job was to find the menu preferences.

However, as the project progressed, there was a shift in this view. Six months later, they came with the concept of The Good Kitchen . With the help of the human-centric approach of Design Thinking, Hatch & Bloom not only created a new menu but re-designed the meal service with more quality, flexibility, and freedom of choice.

There are two types of meal services in Denmark:

1.1) Refrigerated and vacuum-packed food: This type of food, delivered to citizens once a week, had a shelf life of two weeks.

1.2) Hot meals: Meant to be delivered to citizens each day.

The Design Thinking process was divided into four sections:

What Is: The stage focuses on what are the current needs? What are the obstacles we want to overcome? It gives insights into what our stakeholders are looking for and is not about jumping to the conclusion.
What If : The stage covers the current possibilities. At this stage, we also look at how to overcome the constraints.
What Wows: During this stage, learners look at the different ideas created during – What If phase.
What Works: The stage covers prototypes, generated from the What Wow phase, and puts them in the hands of our customers/stakeholders.

Design Thinking Stage 1 of Good Kitchen Project: What Is?

Associates of Hatch and Bloom started by digging deep to know the behaviour, unarticulated needs, and unsaid demands of the elderly by interviewing them and observing them doing their daily tasks. They used the Ethnographic approach and the Journey Mapping tool to trace the experience of the elderly from the time they ordered the food. One can even say that the journey maps are like a flow chart or supply chains that we use in businesses. But through journey maps, one can track functional and emotional journeys, making this tool very valuable for uncovering hidden opportunities to create better value for people.

Apart from studying the current customers, they also studied those who have discontinued the meal service and elders close to retirement age as they might soon opt for the subsidized meal. The associates accompanied the food delivery employees and even observed the senior citizens while they prepared their meals. The associates soon realized that focusing on the elders was not enough; they will have to address the problems at the ground level and interview the team who prepares the meal.

Also, they wanted the municipal officials to understand the importance of the work they are doing and outline their needs and work processes. And what they saw in the kitchen surprised them. Both the audience (senior citizens and members of the food preparation committee) had unfulfilled emotional needs. Mentioned below are more learnings from the observation:

The social stigma of receiving such assistance weighed heavily on the elderly as they are embarrassed. Also, the loss of control over food choices was painful for them.
For senior citizens, it was painful to lose control over their food choices. Also, deciding what kind of food they put in their mouths was the second most important thing for them after taking care of their hygiene.
Senior citizens hated eating alone as it reminded them that their families were no longer around. The less they enjoyed their meal, the smaller their appetites.

Problems that Kitchen Employees Faced

Working in a public service kitchen was a low-status job, which is why the employees seemed to be unmotivated.
Kitchen workers were not enjoying making the same low-cost meals all over again not because they lacked skills, but because of the logistical constraints that prevented them from doing something more interesting.

They also spotted some positive points during the first stage of the design thinking process, such as:

There was no lack of skilled staff in the kitchen. The kitchen workers did care and wanted to do a good job.
All the senior citizens were responsible and capable in the kitchen. Also, they had a keen sense of the seasons and positive associations with seasonal food, such as apples in the fall and strawberries in summer. Quite often, they used to customize the meals by adding spices or using their potatoes or vegetables.

During this stage, Hatch & Bloom facilitators created workshops that brought together a diverse set of stakeholders, such as public officials, volunteers, experts with elderly issues, kitchen workers, and employees of residential care facilities. They began by serving participants food from the actual kitchen to give an experience similar to that of the customers. All of them reviewed the ethnographic research and developed insights and design criteria to form idea generation.

Hatch and Bloom also used the brainstorming process during which facilitators used analogies as trigger questions to help shift participants’ mental models of food service as they generated ideas. They triggered a creative rush by asking participants to think of the kitchen as a restaurant, and delivery people are the waiters.

Through this, they also come up with ideas to improve the vehicle used for delivery. It was also found that the menu had minimum information about the food. For example, one item in the menu said – Liver Potatoes and Sauce, which doesn’t sound tempting. That’s when they come up with the idea of describing a meal on the menu.

Hatch and Bloom moved to this stage during the third workshop, which was all about testing ideas rather than generating new ones. For example, they experimented with three different variants of the menu. They showed the participants three different versions of the menu that varied in terms of colour, typography, and pictures. Visualization, a design thinking tool, was used to make these options feel more real to participants.

After learning from this initial set of experimentation, they moved to their second project, which was to change the packaging. They came up with the modular meal packaging idea, wherein the components were placed separately rather than kept together. The process also yielded new uniforms for employees and a new name- the Good Kitchen- that reflected everybody’s aspirations more accurately.

They also came up with new communication channels, such as Newsletters and Comments Cards, to bridge the gap between the kitchen staff and senior citizens. The design thinking tools such as journey mapping, co-creation, prototyping, and experimentation yielded a host of dramatic changes, such as changes in staff uniform and new feedback mechanisms.

The project yielded many positive results, such as:

A new name, communication style, and visual identity were the primary changes that this design style changed about the Holstebro Municipality’s meal service. This improved the overall image associated with the senior’s appetite enhancement and gave them a good meal experience.

With the help of a dialogue tool, seniors shared their suggestions and feedback about the meal through postcards. All these postcards were read aloud during staff meetings and put up in the kitchen for the entire staff to gain insight into what the seniors think about their food.

Now, the Good Kitchen offers new season-inspired dishes of higher quality than before. Though they still give more emphasis on the traditional taste experience, the menu also contains improved meals.

Guest menus and kitchen specialities

The Good Kitchen even extends its services by creating a Guest menu, a two-course meal. They also incorporated homemade pastry and chocolates in their menu.

As you must have read, the results of implementing Design Thinking were all about happy seniors with better nutrition and motivated employees with more pride in work. If you wish to learn more about it, apply now for the Design Thinking Course , taught by the world-class faculty. You can drop your queries in the comment box mentioned below.

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Municipality of Holstebro, Denmark > The Good Kitchen: How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People

We differentiate between three editorial levels of stories:

1) Design thinking classics: Case studies that are well-documented and widely known, which we include in our collection for the sake of completeness. If not stated otherwise there are compiled by our editors via desk research.

2) Normal cases: Stories, which are less known and got collected and rewritten by our editors via desk research.

3) Stories with validated data: These cases are based on first-hand empirical information that our editors received during their research.

In autumn 2007 the Danish innovation and design agency Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new meal service for The Municipality of Holstebro. Six month later the idea for The Good Kitchen was created. Thus the way was cleared for a new type of meal service in Denmark, a meal service with more quality, more flexibility and more freedom of choice.

The Danes, like citizens in most developed countries, recognize that the aging of their population presents many challenges. One of these is serving the more than 125,000 senior citizens who rely on government-sponsored meals. Danish municipalities deliver subsidized meals to people who suffer from a reduced ability to function, due to illness, age, or other conditions. Many of the seniors have nutritional challenges and a poor quality of life because they simply do not eat enough. In fact, it is estimated that 60% of Denmark’s seniors in assisted living facilities or residential care units have poor nutrition, and 20% are actually malnourished. The result is both health problems and a low quality of life for the elderly and a greater economic burden on the government. The problem only looks to intensify as the number of senior citizens grows and future generations of seniors expect greater choice and better service.

In response to this growing social problem, the Municipality of Holstebro applied for an innovative program, offered through the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, that provides funding to municipalities and facilitates partnerships between those municipalities and Danish design firms. The firm Hatch & Bloom signed on to be part of the effort to improve meal service for seniors. Innovation director Lotte Lyngsted Jepsen led the effort over the next 6 months.

As Lotte recalled it, both Holstebro officials and the leaders of the Hospitable Food Service (Holstebro’s meal preparation and delivery organization) saw the project as straightforward at its outset: the current menu just needed some updating. In their view, they already offered high-quality food and service, so the Hatch & Bloom team’s role would be to ask elderly clients about their menu preferences. As the project progressed, however, this view shifted. The result was the design of a wholly new meal service that offered higher quality, more flexibility, and increased choice. This dramatic reframing of the opportunity emerged from the user-centered design approach that Hatch & Bloom brought to the process.

Design Tool : Ethnography in Social Services

We find the ethnographic focus of design thinking to be especially powerful in the social services sector. Despite the best intentions, when leaders of agencies that serve the indigent or the elderly base solutions on their own views of the needs and wants of those clients, the quality of the solutions suffers. We simply cannot be sure that we understand the details of their lives, when we don’t observe and ask .

Ethnographic Research: Learning to See What is?

The Hatch & Bloom team began by digging deep into seniors’ behaviors, needs and wishes, using a comprehensive ethnographic-based research process that focused on identifying their current situation and unarticulated needs. Team members rode with food service employees who delivered the meals to the elderly clients, accompanied them into the homes and watched as clients prepared the food, added ingredients, set the table, and ate the meal. In addition to observing current customers, they studied those who had discontinued the service as well as people close to retirement age who might soon qualify for the subsidized meals.

They also interviewed the supervisor of the food preparation process in her workplace. What they saw in the kitchen surprised them. “The people who worked in the kitchen were a major factor that needed to be addressed,” Lotte told us. “We realized only by being there that the atmosphere was not what we would expect to find if the food service was as good as they said it was. Instead of just asking the elderly clients what they would like, we would have to ask the people who worked with the food as well.”

Working in a public service kitchen was a low-status job in Denmark. In addition, there had recently been negative press about poor or even old food being served in such kitchens. “There was a general perception that the people who worked in these public kitchens didn’t know how to cook and were sloppy, and that the kitchens were dirty and so on,” Lotte explained. “We found that the kitchen staff was sick and tired of being told that they should do something differently. But nobody ever asked them how they would like to do things differently.”

It was not going to be enough to focus on the needs of the consumers, team members realized; they would need to address the problems of the employees producing the meals as well. The team decided to broaden the scope of the project beyond just improving menus, and helped the government clients to understand why this was necessary. As a result, the Hatch & Bloom researchers also conducted interviews with and observed the kitchen workers, outlining their needs and work processes. From this dual focus—on the people preparing the meals and on the seniors receiving them—a set of interesting findings began to emerge.

Design Challenge : Changing Scope

When we set out to explore an opportunity, we often find that our initial scoping of the issue was flawed. Here a problem that we thought had an obvious solution – whether that be an updated menu or a better search software – actually required the redesign of an entire experience. It’s not easy to reframe an issue or problem. But it can help to think of the initial scope of the project as a hypothesis that you must revisit and refine along the way. Keep in mind – this does not indicate a mistake in our early scoping; it is a sign of important learning .

Understanding Kitchen Employees

As the research team observed kitchen employees and interviewed them about their jobs, they were surprised to find that one of the workers’ major frustrations was that they were not empowered to do what they loved. They had chosen to work with food because they enjoyed creating things out of food, but they were forced to prepare the same food from the same menu month after month. The decision to use one menu for three months made sense from an operational logistics point of view, but it was terribly corrosive to the morale, motivation, and commitment of the kitchen employees, and, the team learned, it wasn’t good for customers, either.

During the interviews, another important thing happened: The kitchen employees realized that someone was listening and trying to help. Catering officer Birgit Jespersen noted that this generated tremendous goodwill for the project. “At first, we were a little skeptical, but the project was handled in a good way,” she said. “The designers and management listened to us, and everyone’s opinions and ideas carried equal weight.”

The more the team from Hatch & Bloom got to know the kitchen employees, the more it became apparent that this was a skilled workforce. Public perception and reality were quite different. The workers were making boring, low-cost meals because of perceived economic and logistical constraints, not because they faced a skills gap.

Understanding Seniors

The seniors receiving meals also suffered from feelings of disconnection and stigma, the Hatch & Bloom team learned in interviews with them. The social stigma of even having to receive such assistance weighed heavily: Help for cleaning was considered acceptable in Danish culture, but help for more personal needs was much less so. It also mattered who was providing the help. In Denmark a senior hoped to receive it from a relative or a friend. If that was not possible, one would perhaps hire someone. The last resort was to receive assistance from the government.

Also very painful to seniors was the loss of control over their food choices. “We discovered that deciding what kind of food they put in their mouths was the second most important thing for the elderly, after taking care of their personal hygiene,” Lotte explained. Furthermore, they often disliked eating alone because it reminded them that their families were no longer around. All these factors, Lotte pointed out, were linked to the underlying problem: “The less you enjoy the situation, the smaller your appetite.”

On a more positive note, the team also discovered that this generation of seniors was very responsible and capable in the kitchen and had a keen sense of the seasons and positive associations with seasonal food, such as apples in the fall and strawberries in summer. They also often tried to customize their meals by adding spices or using their own potatoes or vegetables.

As Hatch & Bloom began integrating what they had learned from both seniors and kitchen employees, the news was good. Lotte explained:

A lot of the findings in the kitchen actually worked very well with the findings from the users. So, for instance, the fact that it’s incredibly boring to choose from the same menu three months in a row: That’s a typical leader’s decision because it makes logistics easier. You can buy more of the same food at one time, and so forth. But it’s not a chef’s decision, and it’s not a user’s decision, either.

Stakeholder Workshops: Hatching & Blooming

Once team members had finished their ethnographic research, they moved to enlist a broader group of stakeholders in understanding the nature of the challenges and participating in creating solutions. The goal was to solicit a wide range of ideas for developing a new and better meal service. To accomplish this, they held a series of three workshops.

Workshop #1
Workshop #2
Workshop #3

The first workshop brought together municipality officials, volunteers, experts in elderly issues, kitchen workers, and employees of residential care centers. This group of roughly 25 people gathered for the first daylong workshop to review the ethnographic research and develop insights that would later facilitate the creation of innovative ideas when they transitioned from What is? to What if? .

The Hatch & Bloom facilitators began by serving food from the actual kitchen to give participants an experience similar to that of the customers. As Lotte noted, “A lot of the politicians who talk about this food had never eaten it themselves.” The researchers also presented their findings. The purpose of the workshop was strategic: to build awareness of the issue and a shared vantage point as the group proceeded to address it. No solutions were discussed yet.

Design Tool : Co-Creation in Social Services

As with ethnography (and for many of the same reasons), co-creation is especially powerful in social service projects. This has to do in large part with the complexity of the stakeholder network. Unlike business, where we often find a single decision maker, social service projects generally involve multiple decision makers, each of whom must support a proposed solution. Enlisting them in the design of solutions is both more effective and even more efficient under these circumstances.

During the second workshop, facilitators and participants used a mind mapping approach, first grouping the key findings and observations gathered during the What is? process into categories—for instance, the delivery of the food or the composition of the menu. They then delved further, exploring what insights flowed from each of these clusters and what these might indicate were the design criteria to best describe what an ideal solution might look like. They then moved into What if? and began generating ideas. Facilitators used analogies as trigger questions to help shift participants’ mental models of food service. The facilitators asked participants to think of the kitchen as a restaurant, triggering a creative rush. “Just the fact that they had to relate to them first being a restaurant instead of being a public service kitchen, kind of changed their perception completely,” Lotte explained as she described her experience of the effect of introducing the analogy, “Because they said ‘okay, but then we must be chefs. And if we’re the chefs, who are the waiters?’”

Design Tool : Trigger Questions

Trigger questions provide structure and inspiration for the brainstorming process. The infamous “What are ten uses for a safety pin?” type of trigger question has done much to giving brainstorming a bad name among managers. Truly useful trigger questions help people think more creatively about future possibilities by giving them something specific to work with. Questions often involve the use of analogies, as with our example in this chapter: “What if this public-service food-delivery organization were a restaurant?”

The third workshop, which was much more hands-on, moved into the What wows? phase, involving prototyping their co-created solutions and began testing them. For example, Hatch & Bloom worked with participants on three different versions of the menu and asked them which they liked and how they felt about various aspects, such as which colors they favored and whether they preferred photos or illustrations.

Hatch & Bloom had invited a well-known chef to observe the kitchen in action and then to attend the workshop. He was surprised, he told the participants, by the kitchen workers’ skills: They were almost at the level of professional chefs. But they had different results he argued, which was because of their different focus, not a lack of skill. As they prepared meals, the kitchen employees concentrated on maximizing economy rather than food styling or seasoning or other aspects that professional chefs would focus on. Being compared with chefs shocked the people who worked in the kitchens. It also boosted their confidence and sparked an increased passion for the project because they were being told that they were actually good at something.

The workshop participants continued working with the restaurant analogy as they considered the menus. Until that point, the menus had been minimalist factual descriptions of the food, perhaps detailing how it was prepared. For example, one item read, “liver, potatoes, and sauce.” “That is not exactly a description that will make your mouth water, “ Lotte pointed out, “They just printed these menus out and never gave a thought to how they should look. But now they wondered, ‘maybe they should look like actual menus; maybe we should describe our meals in a completely different way.’”

The group also began to focus on the fact that many of the vehicles used for meal delivery were in poor condition. “Some customers asked drivers to go down the street a bit because they were so embarrassed by the car,” Lotte told us. “They really thought the neighbors would think ‘Oh, now she’s having a funeral’ or something like that because the vehicle was really, really sad.”

Prototyping with Customers

Hatch & Bloom took the results from the workshops and moved into What works? , testing prototypes with different combinations and ways of presenting the food with the customers they had been observing since the beginning of the project. As before during their initial exploratory research during What is? , they didn’t test the prototypes only with current customers, but also with people who had stopped using the service and with younger people who were nearing retirement age.

The learning from this initial set of experiments resulted in a second project with some quick packaging design changes that allowed for more modular meals where the components were separated, instead of being mixed together. Lotte explained:

“Instead of having a tray where there’s potatoes or rice or pasta, and then there is some meat and some sauce and then there’s some vegetables, we implemented a solution where you pack these things separately so you don’t have to order potatoes if you prefer to do your own potatoes or if you prefer some kind of specific pasta or if you have some of your vegetables. So you can order potatoes and vegetables on the side but then you can mix what you prefer yourself instead of someone already deciding that for you.”

From Public-Sector Food-Service Employees to Restaurant Chefs

In order to change the negative kitchen culture at Hospitable Food Service, Hatch & Bloom then brought in a gourmet chef to work with employees. This generated more than a little nervousness among them. “Here was this really competent chef, and we were concerned that he might criticize us,” catering officer Birgit Jespersen recounted, “but he praised our food and said that we had a very high technical level. That was a real boost, and today we feel like chefs ourselves.”

The chef inspired the kitchen employees to introduce more seasonal ingredients and offered ideas for improving presentation. This has made a real difference. “Now we take the time to make an appealing presentation,” Birgit said. “We also are thinking more about colors. For example, we toss carrots with parsley to add some color to the tray. And we are putting an emphasis on seasoning the food well.”

Kitchen employees also received new uniforms that were much more “chef-like.” This was a symbol of their dignity and status, and it signaled a sense of pride and care to their customers as well. “The old uniforms were like nightgowns,” Lotte recalled. “They were very sad to look at, not aesthetically pleasing. Just by having these new uniforms, we gave them a level of authority they were not used to.”

From Hospitable Food Service to the Good Kitchen

The process of ethnographic observation, mind mapping, co-creating with stakeholders, and iterative prototyping and experimentation yielded a host of dramatic changes: a new menu, new uniforms for staff, a new feedback mechanism (we’ll get to that in a bit)—an overall new experience for both customers and employees. Employees’ images of themselves and the services they provided changed, and this itself seemed to improve customer satisfaction levels.

The process also yielded a new name: Hospitable Food Service became The Good Kitchen. “We wanted a name that internally and externally showed that the employees were committed to their work,” Lotte explained. “They were doing exactly what you would in your own kitchen, just on a bigger scale. So we changed the name; we changed the identity.” As Paul Sangill, the head of office in Holstebro’s Department of Health and Social Services, observed, “It’s an ambitious name, which was exactly what we wanted, and we are working hard to live up to the expectations.”

The new menu looked like a real restaurant menu. Instead of a list of dishes, it presented categories such as entrees, desserts, and so on. Items were also explained in greater detail. Paul Sangill described the new experience:

“We write about the ingredients in a way that gives the senior citizens a sense of tasting the food. Before we would write ‘fried calf’s liver with gravy, potatoes, and vegetables.’ Now we write ‘pan-fried liver with onions and gravy, potatoes tossed with thyme, and butter-roasted vegetables.’ We now have about 80 people a week choosing liver, where we used to have ten.”

Good Kitchen employees also made changes to the menu based on what they heard from seniors. For example, they learned that a lot of their clients were still very social, so they added a two-course guest menu. They also introduced individual snacks, such as pastries and chocolate, to enable seniors to adapt their meals to their lifestyles and behaviours.

In addition, at the request of customers and with the assistance of a consulting chef, The Good Kitchen began to offer high-quality additions. Some of these were inspired by the finding that the elderly clients had positive associations with foods that had been available, in their past, only at certain times of the year. The menu emphasized traditional dishes with familiar taste experiences but now included dishes such as “lemon spaghetti with mushrooms and parsley” and “soup with Jerusalem artichokes and grilled cockerel.” There was also a “weekly surprise,” which allowed for more creativity by Good Kitchen employees and greater variety for customers.

The Good Kitchen Becomes Part of the Family

Employees in the kitchen had not been accustomed to communicating with the people they served (this goes back to the “Who are the waiters?” question). The drivers who delivered the meals, who were all kitchen employees, would enter the seniors’ homes and leave without reflecting on what they saw. So the team developed simple comment cards that drivers began to carry with them and hand to customers, who wrote reviews of their meals and suggestions for how to prepare them. This immediate feedback enabled the staff to gain insights into the seniors’ thoughts and reactions to their food. The comments were read aloud at staff meetings and pinned up in a central kitchen location. The cards motivated employees and gave seniors the ability to influence their meals. Both groups loved the new feedback cards.

This direct contact was reinforced with indirect contact. For example, large photos from home visits were hung on the walls of the kitchen, bringing employees closer to their customers. The Good Kitchen also began publishing a newsletter that included posts from kitchen employees, information about and pictures of new hires, and other important events such as employees’ birthdays and the birth of a grandchild. This gave the elderly a better understanding of what happened in the kitchen and communicated that there were real people standing in front of the stove who took pride in what they did.

Today, Holstebro’s seniors “know who is shaping the meatballs and preparing the gravy in the municipal kitchen,” as Lotte described it. The relationship between the kitchen staff and the customers, which is both personal and professional, has increased the satisfaction of both. Lotte explained the benefit of this improved communication:

“It’s great that we’re in touch with the customers every week through the drivers who deliver the food. Many private companies would pay good money for that degree of customer contact, because it offers a unique opportunity to keep tabs on what’s important.”

Results: The Proof Is in the Pudding

Once the transformation from Hospitable Food Services to The Good Kitchen was complete, the results spoke for themselves. Reorganizing the menu and improving the descriptions of the meals drove a 500% increase in meal orders in the first week alone . Within three months, the number of customers had increased from 650 to 700.

One of the most important elements of the transformation has been the shift in employees’ perception of themselves and their work . Kitchen workers are now much more satisfied and motivated. As a result, customers are happier with their food. “If you have professional pride, you’ll also cook good food,” Anne Marie Nielsen, the director of The Good Kitchen, told us. “Good food has to come from the heart! This experience generated so much positive energy. We have received positive reactions from everywhere—from users and partners and colleagues in other municipalities.” Moreover, The Good Kitchen now receives many more unsolicited job applications as word of the improved reputation has spread .

The changes in mind-set were the most significant indicators of success to Lotte, but difficult to pinpoint precisely: “When you do this kind of culture-changing redesign of services, it is very challenging—are the results about our solutions ? Or about me looking somebody in the eye and showing interest in their work?”

The Good Kitchen’s success was noticed outside of Holstebro as well. The Good Kitchen and Hatch & Bloom shared the Danish Design Prize for Service Design , as well as the Local Government Denmark Prize for Innovation in 2009.

What Do We Take Away from the Good Kitchen Story?

By identifying a public challenge to the health of seniors and a fiscal challenge to the state, and using an arsenal of design tools to address both, the Municipality of Holstebro dramatically improved the service experience and quality of life for both employees and customers. This project comes as close to providing a truly win-win solution as we are likely to find, transforming a vicious cycle of malnourished seniors, unhappy employees, and increased health care costs into a virtuous one with healthier, happier seniors (and employees) and improved costs to the state.

The learnings in this chapter are especially near and dear to us because they highlight design thinking’s ability to produce not just better business results but a better world for us all. So simple, so powerful, so inspiring—using design to change the world, not just make it pretty. But accomplishing this requires that we act in new ways:

Be willing to engage the entire system. It is worth noting that this chapter is as much about system design as it is about service design. It reminds us of a lesson that Peter Senge taught us long ago in The Fifth Discipline : Put the whole system in the room. In business, we have gotten much better about the customer part, but we still often neglect employees and communities. Design thinking gives us a detailed suggestion about what to do with the system once all parts of it are in the room: share the findings of the deep ethnographic exploration of the stakeholders we want to serve, build an aligned intent around making their lives better, and then invite everyone to derive insights, generate design criteria, and co-create solutions.

Be willing to redefine the problem. Even with the problem definition (much less the solution!), where you start is not where you should expect to end up. And that’s good news. You didn’t get it wrong– you learned . So many of our flawed solutions can be traced to having stuck with a limiting question. One of the most significant contributions of design is to help us live longer in the question. It is our willingness to revisit the question we asked at the outset that allows us to reframe the way we see the world and discover new possibilities. It allows us to end up in places that we never suspected at the beginning of the process. But doing this requires bravery, as Lotte reminded us:

If you use design thinking, you must realize that it might lead you to places you didn’t expect to end up. And if you have the courage to embrace that, you can go tremendously far and you can try out different methods and you can ask, ‘Do they work for me? Do they work for my organization?’ But that requires a certain level of courage and a willingness to change. If you’re not brave enough to face these consequences, and if you don’t have the mandate from your leaders, then it’s very difficult to do innovation. Innovation requires space—mental space and financial space and organizational space.

Design feedback into the solution so that you won’t have to fix big problems so often. Why do we spend so much time trying to create dramatic, wrenching change? Usually because we ignored the signals that would have allowed us to adapt more gradually. If we build those signals into our design of the offering or service, the odds that we’ll see them before the crisis go way up. That is what those simple feedback cards do for The Good Kitchen. They create a seemingly mundane but very valuable ongoing conversation about daily hits and misses that helps employees get to know their stakeholders better along the way and greatly reduces the need for cataclysmic change later on.

Appreciate the awesome power of ethnography. We sound like a broken record by this point. But if you take only one thing from this book, this should be it. The story of The Good Kitchen reveals more powerfully than any other why this is true. Most of us reading this chapter are not now elderly (despite what our children think). Most of us can’t recall the sweet pleasure of having strawberries only in summer. We cannot really know what it means to lose, one by one, the freedoms the young and healthy take for granted: to choose our food, to control our personal hygiene, to be able to have dinner with those we care about. Without ethnography, we will not know these things until it is too late to improve the lives of the elderly. We’ll throw strawberries on everything all year long, wasting their ability to conjure up memories of summers past. We will dictate meal choices that are economical or that make sense to us, and package them in servings of one so that they can only be eaten alone. Without the deep insights produced by ethnography, how many opportunities to do something truly special for an elderly person—something that probably costs little or no additional money—will we fail to see?

We recall a Legal Aid attorney’s comments to us about the challenges that she and her colleagues faced in providing truly useful legal services to the poor: We are, and I will make a broad generalization here, ivory tower babies. We’re very privileged. We have telephones and good incomes. And we have transportation. We don’t face a lot of the problems that these clients are facing every day. And so we don’t understand what they go through. But at least design thinking gives us tools to help us try.

This case study is an adapted version of a book chapter that has originally been published as “Solving Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works” . It is republished here by courtesy of the authors.

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The Authors

Jeanne liedtka, please rate this.

Was this story informative?

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May 25, 2016

I really appreciate the initiatives taken by ‘Hatch and Bloom’ team to care about the elderly population in Denmark. A heart-felt thanks to ‘Hatch and Bloom’s team for their diligent approach in impacting the lives of senior citizens.

May 29, 2019

Somehow over the years we as a people forgot how to communicate and talk to each other. “it takes a village” Same holds true for the workplace and successful business…It takes everyone on the team to contribute.

August 21, 2023

really appreciate and would be a sufficient solution ..

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The Good Kitchen

Improved food service equals better life quality for elderly people.

In autumn 2007 the Danish idea- and design agency, Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new meal service for The Municipality of Holstebro. Six month later the idea for The Good Kitchen was created. Thus the way was cleared for a new type of meal service in Denmark, a meal service with more quality, more flexibility and more freedom of choice.

The briefing

Facts on danish meal service.

Meal service is a public service that is assigned to citizens that because of reduced functions, illness, age or other reasons are referred to have food delivered with subsidy from the municipality.
Refrigerated and vacuum packed food with approx two weeks shelf life. The food is delivered to the citizen once a week for a week's consumption.
Hot food delivered to the citizen every day.
Refrigerated and vacuum-packed food is the most common type of meal service as it is the cheapest way to produce a meal and ensure correct nutrition. The food is usually prepared, packed and delivered from a public catering centre in the municipalities. Otherwise private companies are in charge of the meal service.
Most public meal services offer special diets for diabetics, vegetarians or citizens with diminished appetite.

Challenges for Danish meal service

Today 125,000 seniors are dependent on meal service. This number will increase intensely as the total number of seniors above 67 years will increase during the next 10 years. This means new and high demands on food quality and menu variation.
60% of seniors living in assisted living facilities has a poor nutritional condition, 20% hereof are downright malnourished. Almost all seniors are at risk of getting a disease as a consequence to bad or wrong nutrition.
Poor nutritional condition has negative consequences for seniors' health and causes reduced functions making it harder for the seniors to take care of themselves. In the end this means poorer quality of life and an increased socio-economic burden because of an increased need for assistance and support.
Apart from the health related challenges, Danish meal service is facing another extensive challenge when it comes to accommodating the seniors' individual needs and wishes. Today all seniors in a municipality and in institutions are receiving the same type of public meal service, regardless if they are well functioning or heavily demented.

The process

Participatory observations, user-workshops and idea development.

Under the development of The Good Kitchen, Hatch & Bloom planned and facilitated a string of workshops with representatives from all user groups and interested parties. The objective was together to develop ideas for a new and better meal service through various creative idea development methods, including the method "Radical Analogies". Thinking for instance the meal service as a service for a family with children or as a restaurant created the idea for a new name and image.

Participatory Design

The different design solutions for The Good Kitchen is developed through systematic iterations between design- and feedback studies, among other things by user-workshops, collaborative design processes and testing of user-friendliness with prototypes and mock-ups. This ensured design solutions with a great extend of user-friendliness and applicability.

A kitchen with great added value

A new name, visual identity and communication style was a few of the design solutions that changed the seniors' perception of Holstebro Municipality's meal service. These solutions are contributing to the fact that The Good Kitchen today is perceived as a modern and user-centred kitchen with a focus on quality and a high level of service. It is this improved image that contributes to the enhancement of the seniors' appetite and gives them a good meal experience.

Increased user insight and dialogue

The development of a simple dialogue tool, today gives the seniors a possibility to contribute with suggestions and ideas on postcards for The Good Kitchen. The postcards is read aloud on staff meetings and put up in the kitchen for the entire staff to gain insight into what the seniors think about their food. It makes more committed employees and gives the seniors an opportunity to influence their food.

New dishes and higher food quality

Through cooperation with one of Denmark's finest chefs, The Good Kitchen is today able to offer new season inspired dishes of high quality. The emphasis is still on the good traditional dishes with lots of familiar taste experiences, but the menu also contains newer dishes as, for instance 'lemon spaghetti with mushrooms and parsley' and 'soup with Jerusalem artichokes and grilled cockerel'.

Guest menus and kitchen specialties

The Good Kitchen today has an extended menu containing a two-course guest menu that gives the seniors the possibility to invite guests. In addition there is also a series of kitchen specialties, including homemade pastry and chocolate confectionery.

Hatch & Bloom

How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People

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Kitchen Case Study: Clever Angles

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Hayley Gilbert

Linda Parker

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Jenni Leasia Portland Interior Designer Blog

Interior design and decorating advice and case studies for creating a beautiful personal home.

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Case studies | before & afters | the good life in portland oregon, functional kitchen design: a case study and 11 useful tips.

Designing your kitchen right the first time can save you lots of trouble ( and time! ).

A few months ago, we got a call from some empty nesters in SE Portland. They had done a major remodel, including the kitchen, when they moved into the home 12 years ago. It was clear from the start that the kitchen design fell short and now they wanted to fix it. They don’t plan to move any time soon and they want to enjoy their beautiful historic home but this kitchen was making the head chef crazy.

The new design hasn’t been built yet but we will share photos once it has.

We will get to the part about how unfortunate it is to remodel a kitchen that you have already remodeled, but let’s take a look at this kitchen as a case study. After, we will give you the best tips on how to achieve a functional kitchen design the first time around. But first, we will show why this kitchen was so intolerable and how we fixed it.

I have seen some bad kitchens over the years and this wasn’t the worst by any means, but there were some serious obstacles to the cooking flow. The original kitchen was too narrow for an island. The previous designer tried to work around this by putting the island in front of the opening to the breakfast room but that solution created a new set of issues:

The workspace was crammed into one side of the long room. (Note how tight fridge, sink and cooktop were in the plan.)

The island had to be small and ended up as all cooktop with no workspace.

They tried to amend the lack of countertop by putting a butcher block next to it, but that created a passage by the island that anyone but a child would have to turn sideways to move through and doesn’t offer the expansive workspace you might expect in a kitchen of this size.

The floor plan is out of balance with everything shifted to one side leaving a void in the rest of the room.

Jenni Leasia Interior Design Before Photo Kitchen Design.jpeg

Another issue that isn’t as easy to see in plan-view is the placement of full depth, full height cabinetry that have a tendency to overwhelm any space with their heft. The ovens along the sink wall felt bulky and blocked the sightline to the corner window from almost every vantage point.

The other tall cabinet, outlined in orange above, cut off the connection between the breakfast room and the kitchen, again by interrupting the sightline. I remember noting that the kitchen felt strangely closed off from the breakfast room, which is right there, during my first meeting with the clients.

They had been living with this for many years and were intimately acquainted with every issue. They also had thought through what they needed and what they were willing to give up but weren’t sure what was possible and what would be sensible from a budget perspective.

The clients wanted an island but I knew there wasn’t room unless we expanded into adjacent areas. The closets along the center hall offered a possibility of expansion. The clients had already considered this option and agreed at our initial meeting that they would sacrifice the coat closets if it gave them a more beautiful, functional kitchen that was more fitting for their style and home.

We went through a couple of iterations before landing on this plan.

Jenni%2BLeasia%2BDesign%2B%25281%2529.jpg

Giving up the closet space to the kitchen opened up a world of possibilities.

The island has grown to just short of 10’ with an open 6’ workspace.

There is plenty of room to move around the island, without any side-stepping.

We still have deep cabinetry along the pantry and fridge wall, but now that it is set further back it doesn’t cut off the view between the kitchen and breakfast room. Notice the cook can be prepping in that big 6’ workspace and chat with friends on a stool by the island, or in the breakfast room. In the original plan, they wouldn’t be able to see around that corner—plus there wasn’t a nice prep space there anyway.

The pantry, oven and fridge wall forms one clean integrated line similar to what we designed for a recent project in the photo on right.

Moving the ovens to the opposite wall opens our view to the corner window, letting in more direct light and leaves the entire window wall without upper cabinets, which was one of our client’s wishes. (We like fewer wall cabinets too. They often look like boxes hanging on walls which isn’t the look we are going for.) We understand storage is a priority in any kitchen, the trick is to integrate it thoughtfully.

Relocating the fridge breaks up the traditional “triangle” rule, which we often ignore. We usually opt to keep the fridge accessible to the workspace, but in a location where kids and guests can get into it without getting into the cook’s way. Moving the fridge also allowed us to wrap the base cabinets around the corner and use that wall to build a tall hutch for tucking away small appliances at counter height. The base cabinet is extra deep at 27” to allow for a little workspace in front of the hutch.

The connection between the kitchen and breakfast room now feels like the open concept it is. The chefs can still join in on conversations and be a part of the party. Most importantly, it allows for mingling without guests actually having to come in the kitchen and get in the way of cooking.

11 Best Tips for Functional Kitchen Design and Layout

Now that the case study has given us an idea of what not to do, let’s take a closer look at what we should do. There are key elements to every design that determines its functionality and overall aesthetic. A well-designed kitchen should be able to check off all the items on this list.

Comfortable Clearance

The only shimmying that should be done in the kitchen is an impromptu dance with a loved one. If you reflexively turn sideways or shrug in your shoulders, then you do not have enough clearance. This feeling of claustrophobia goes a long way in making a kitchen feel impractical. It can be frustrating to work in and suck some of the joy out of cooking.

Ample Workspace

Sometimes, people grow so concerned with storage space that they overlook the workspace. But nothing is more frustrating than trying to prepare a beautiful meal amongst a cluttered mess. The most functional kitchen designs find a balance between workspace and storage space. Ample workspace relies on more than just surface area, though, which brings us to our next point.

Balanced Workspace

Functional kitchen design carefully considers what each workspace will be used for. For instance, a tiny workspace by the stove and a big workspace across the room isn’t functional. The ratio of workspace needs to relate to the function it serves. Kitchen islands are great for all-around function but aren’t always possible in certain floorplans. So, countertops have to be as carefully configured as appliances.

Minimize Upper Cabinets

Modern kitchen design has been moving away from upper cabinets, or at least the overuse of them. Upper cabinets add a lot of aesthetic weight to the kitchen and can make a space feel dark and cramped. Giving up upper cabinets does not necessarily mean giving up storage. Open or floating shelves and other creative storage solutions can add both function and design to wall space.

Thoughtful Storage

Limiting the number of enclosed cabinets means you need to be extra thoughtful about storage. Consider what kitchen tools, small appliances, and dishes can be displayed in open storage, such as floating shelves or hanging solutions. Then, have a clear idea of what each storage space will be used for. Consider cabinet depths, inside shelf heights, and drawers vs. cabinets.

Clear Sightline

The feeling of openness relies heavily on what we can see. Picture yourself standing in each corner of the kitchen. What do you see? Do you see a fridge jutting out? Do you see large cabinets blocking the view into adjoining rooms? Are upper cabinets blocking a window and its lovely view? The farther the eye can see without interruption, the bigger the kitchen will feel.

Natural Light

Natural light is your friend, especially in workspaces like the kitchen, where you need to see what you are doing. A room filled with natural light is always more inviting than a closed-in space that is lit artificially. We love a wall of windows above the kitchen sink. It creates such a nice workspace compared to wall ovens and other cabinets flanking the sink. (We will follow up with a post on how to light a kitchen. After all, natural light won’t carry you through the evening.)

Open Concept, but Not Too Open

It is important to connect the kitchen with the eating area or sitting area so that the cooks can be part of the conversation. However, you want to protect the workspace so that friends and family don’t interrupt the workflow. Guests shouldn’t feel like they have to enter the work area in order to visit.

Smart Fridge Access

In our earlier case study, you’ll notice that we moved the fridge near the breakfast room. This was a mindful kitchen design choice that made the refrigerator not only easy to access from the workspace, but also the breakfast room. Placing a fridge near guest areas or kitchen entrance keeps it accessible for guests without them getting in the way of the cook at the stove or sink.

Ignore the Triangle Rule (Sometimes)

The triangle rule is a good rule of thumb for kitchen design, but it should be more of a consideration than a rule. The main idea behind the triangle rule is the uninterrupted flow between the cooktop, refrigerator, and sink. But sometimes, that is achieved in a less geometrically-restricted way. In many cases, there are a lot of design options that can improve upon the rule, if not break it entirely.

Hire a Kitchen Designer (Not Just a Contractor)

The clients in our case study remodeled their kitchen as part of a more extensive renovation when they first moved into the home. They had a good sense of design and functionality, but they were understandably distracted by the bigger remodel. Needless to say, some functional details fell between the cracks—cracks that weren’t filled by their architect or contractor.

Even if you are working with an architect or contractor, it is worth the time and money to have a kitchen designer review the plan and offer ideas on how to improve it. Kitchens are SO IMPORTANT. If you are spending money to renovate, you need to make sure to do it correctly the first time. Our clients from our case study want you to learn from their mistakes, which is why they were so kind to share their story. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for years to come in dissatisfaction, or in real money to renovate again.

Finding the Best Kitchen Designers

A good designer will do everything possible to create a space that works the way you want to work, reflects you and your taste, and will last for many years. If we ever get a call back to work on a property again, it should be for another room in the home. We recently completed a master suite remodel for someone whose kitchen we did more than ten years ago, and she told me several times during our first project meeting, “We still love our kitchen.” Now that’s the mark of a functional kitchen design that stands the test of time.

View Jenni Leasia’s portfolio for other beautiful kitchen designs. Contact us today for a free consultation.

Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying Design Thinking and Service-Dominant Logic

First Online: 19 July 2023

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Saurabh Gupta 10 &
Waldemar Pfoertsch 11

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In difficult situations new approaches are needed. For malnourished residents of Danish municipal senior citizen homes, urgent solutions were required and the H2H Marketing could be a promising approach. Design thinking (DT), service-dominant logic (S-DL), and digitization are highlighted as the key elements of H2H Marketing. Using the example of The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken), the process and the effects of DT, S-DL, and digitization are explained, and results can inspire further applications of this innovation approach. The case study highlights the effectiveness of H2H Marketing and can inspire further innovation approaches. It also discusses the characteristics of the H2H mindset in the applied S-DL approach and relevant measures implemented here. This case study provides valuable insights into how innovative approaches can be used to address urgent problems in various

The case was prepared by Saurabh Gupta under the supervision of Professor Waldemar A. Pfoertsch, Senior Marketing Professor at the CIIM Business School, University of Limassol, as a basis for class discussion rather than an illustration of either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright © 2023 by the authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the authors.

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Pfoertsch, W. A., & Sponholz, U. (2019). Das neue Marketing-Mindset: Management, Methoden und Prozesse für ein Marketing von Mensch zu Mensch . Springer Gabler.

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Gupta, S., Pfoertsch, W. (2023). Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying Design Thinking and Service-Dominant Logic. In: Kotler, P., Pfoertsch, W., Sponholz, U., Haas, M. (eds) H2H Marketing. Springer Business Cases. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22393-8_3

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Today, 125,000 elderly are dependant on public food service in Denmark, and around 30% of all those in care homes are malnourished due to social, psychological and physical factors.

The Good Kitchen is improving the quality of food experience for the elderly. In this way, health conditions for many of them will improve – and so will their wellbeing. The solution also aims to improve social interaction with and respect for the elderly.

The Good Kitchen is constructed as an integrated value chain, including packaging, delivery, product storytelling, visual communication, and user feedback. It is an example of how service design can play a vital part in developing the future of welfare services.

“From an image as a dull and boring public service provider, The Good Kitchen has become a modern and user-oriented kitchen for senior citizens,” said the design team.

The solution has led to improved cooperation, dialogue, and communication between The Good Kitchen, the local health center, and the referral section in Holstebro Municipality.

“It’s a fact that the European welfare state is under heavy pressure. The Good Kitchen shows how to deliver a public service of very high standards.”

Finally, the context is not only public, but also related to a wider context of business and culture.

“As regional branding becomes more and more important for local growth and development, The Good Kitchen can play a vital role in creating an attractive regional centre accelerating business life, cultural life, and social life for all citizens. After all, most of us will get old.”

Designed by Hatch & Bloom (idea and design agency), Holstebro Municipality (client) and The Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority (funding) - Denmark

As a non-profit, we rely on the generous support from a global community of partners and donors. This has kept the mission alive and helped us scale our impact.

Your contributions, great and small, make a difference. Thank you!

Designing the Future Kitchen

How we will cook, eat, and socialize at home.

Help IKEA envision how people's behaviors will shape the design of the future kitchen.

A full-size prototype—including a pantry, table, sink, and disposal—that reflects the social, technological, and demographic forces that will impact how we behave around food in 2025, all while preserving the tactile pleasures of the kitchen.

Of all the rooms in our homes, the kitchen is the center of energy, activity, comfort, and creativity—the beating heart of any dwelling. In the coming decade, as our environments and habits change, the kitchen as we know it will evolve drastically. More people will move into cities, and our living spaces will become smaller. Natural resources will become more scarce, food more expensive, and waste an increasingly urgent issue. Near-instant grocery delivery will alter how we shop for and store food, and technology will be embedded in every part of our homes.

What will the kitchen of the future look like, and, more important, what will it feel like to cook, eat, and socialize there?

For IKEA, the world’s biggest furniture store, the time to start designing the kitchen of 2025 is now. So IKEA asked IDEO London and a group of students from Lund and Eindhoven universities to explore the social, technological, and demographic forces that will impact how we behave around food in 2025. The students spent months researching people’s attitudes and ideas about cooking and eating, and IDEO designers guided them as they built concept kitchen products.

To bring these future concepts to the present day, IKEA asked IDEO to design and build a full-size concept kitchen for 250,000 visitors to test out during the Salone Del Mobile in Milan and a six-month stint at EXPO Milano.

Mindful Design

Crucial to the success of the project was preserving the tactile creative pleasure of the kitchen. Technology could easily make the space feel robotic and sterile, but this project was guided by the need to use tech to enhance the kitchen’s warmth.

The Concept Kitchen 2025 doesn’t automate away personal choices, but rather facilitates mindfulness with embedded cues throughout the kitchen that subtly guide people toward being conscious of their actions and making informed decisions. In designing the prototypes, the following few concepts emerged.

The Modern Pantry encourages us to have a closer relationship with what we eat by storing food in transparent individual containers on open shelves rather than hiding it at the back of the fridge. The design makes it easy to be inspired by what’s on hand rather than going out to buy more, and it also saves energy: Induction-cooling technology embedded into the shelves responds to RFID stickers on the food’s packaging in order to keep the containers at just the right temperature.

The Table for Living is designed to inspire people to be more creative with food and throw away less. At a loss for what to do with that leftover broccoli? Just place it on the table and a camera recognizes it and projects recipes, cooking instructions, and a timer directly onto the table's surface. Set the timer for how long you want to spend preparing the meal, and the table suggests recipes that can be completed in the window you have available. The table is a nifty solution for a smaller urban dwelling because it’s multimodal: Hidden induction coils instantly cool the surface when not in use, so it’s adjustable for working, cooking, or eating.

The Modern Sink pushes us to be more conscious of our water consumption with a pivoting basin. It must be tipped to one side to drain toxic, or “black,” water, and to the other for safe “gray” water, which is not drinkable but can be filtered and used in a dishwasher or as nourishment for the cooking herbs that grow above the sink.

The Thoughtful Disposal system is a response to the overuse of landfills, and reminds us of exactly what we’re throwing away. Users manually sort recycling from rubbish, and recyclables are then crushed, vacuum-packed, and labeled for pick-up, earning credits for the conscientious (and debits for the wasteful).

IKEA’s kitchen and dining range manager, Gerry Dufresne, explained that the Concept Kitchen 2025 is not really a functional kitchen, but rather “a tangible communication of what the behaviors of the future will be.” It’s just the start of IKEA’s journey toward understanding how those behaviors will shape the company’s future, and Dufresne says the findings will be carried forward into future product development.

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Case Study #1 - Ella's Kitchen

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good kitchen case study
Kitchen Design Case Study : Case Study: Kitchen Remodel
Kitchen Design Case Study
good kitchen case study
Design Thinking & Strategy
THE GOOD KITCHEN. Curated Design Thinking case study:

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Design Thinking @ The Good Kitchen
The Good Kitchen, former Hospitable Food Service, is Holstebro's organization that prepares and delivers subsidized meals to people who suffer from a reduced ability to function due to illness, age, or other conditions. ... In this case study, for example, the system includes the Danish elderly (current customers, people who had stopped using ...
How Hatch and Bloom used design thinking to improve food service
The Hatch and Bloom case study is commonly known as the good kitchen case study. The design thinking approach by this food service provider is one of the best in the industry and is completely user-oriented. This case study is often referred to as a model by various organizations following the design thinking process.
Better Life Quality for Elderly People
Good Kitchen employees also made changes to the menu based on what they heard from seniors. For example, they learned that a lot of their clients were still very social, so they added a two-course guest menu. ... This case study is an adapted version of a book chapter that has originally been published as "Solving Problems with Design ...
Design Thinking : the good kitchen story
Feb 21, 2019. THE GOOD KITCHEN - Improved food service equals better life quality for elderly people In autumn 2007 the Danish idea- and design agency, Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new ...
Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying ...
Using the example of The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken), the process and the effects of DT, S-DL, and digitization are explained, and results can inspire further applications of this innovation approach. The case study highlights the effectiveness of H2H Marketing and can inspire further innovation approaches.
Service Design Toolkit
The different design solutions for The Good Kitchen is developed through systematic iterations between design- and feedback studies, among other things by user-workshops, collaborative design processes and testing of user-friendliness with prototypes and mock-ups. This ensured design solutions with a great extend of user-friendliness and ...
Turian Labs
The Good Kitchen Case study from Denmark. Applying DT to improve entire value-chain of government managed meal delivery to the seniors.
The Good Kitchen case study
The Good Kitchen case study Examine this case study to discover how the implementation of the design thinking problem-solving process changed how people approached the problem. Now that we've explored some more principles of design thinking, let's explore a case study that brings them to life.
The Good Kitchen
How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People. In autumn 2007 the Danish innovation and design agency Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new meal service for The Municipality of Holstebro. Six month later the idea for The Good Kitchen was created. Thus the way was cleared for a new type of meal service in ...
The Good Kitchen Story
The classical story illustrating the use of design Thinking with the Four Questions:What is?What if?What Wows?What works?
Kitchen Design Case Studies
Shaker Kitchen - Designed by Harvey Jones. The stories behind the kitchen design - including Q&As with leading Kitchen Bathroom & Bedroom industry designers….
Functional Kitchen Design: A Case Study and 11 Useful Tips
11 Best Tips for Functional Kitchen Design and Layout. Now that the case study has given us an idea of what not to do, let's take a closer look at what we should do. There are key elements to every design that determines its functionality and overall aesthetic. A well-designed kitchen should be able to check off all the items on this list.
PDF Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying ...
3 Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying Design... 73. agency used the ethnographic approach and a journey mapping design tool to understand the functional and emotional needs of the senior citizens. The ﬁndings were at the beginning very surprising: (a) (b) Focus on emotional needs, employees, and company preparing food ...
Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken ...
Request PDF | Case Study: The Good Kitchen (Det Gode Køkken)—Applying Design Thinking and Service-Dominant Logic | In difficult situations new approaches are needed. For malnourished residents ...
The Good Kitchen
The Good Kitchen is constructed as an integrated value chain, including packaging, delivery, product storytelling, visual communication, and user feedback. It is an example of how service design can play a vital part in developing the future of welfare services. "From an image as a dull and boring public service provider, The Good Kitchen has ...
Case Study : Solving real world problems in Kitchen using "Design
4. Prototype. If a picture is worth 1000 Words. A Prototype is worth 1000 meetings. — Saying at IDEO. I went ahead with my top first idea of creating a product which can make the movement of the cylinder from inside the cupboard more easier without any risk of hurting users.
Design Thinking & Strategy
Case apresentado em curso da Universidade da Virgínia.
Designing the Future Kitchen
The Concept Kitchen 2025 exhibition, which debuted at the Milan World Expo, is just one part of an ongoing investigation by IKEA into how people's relationship with food is changing. To bring these future concepts to the present day, IKEA asked IDEO to design and build a full-size concept kitchen for 250,000 visitors to test out during the ...
Case study: Building a better kitchen user experience
3. A proper double bowl sink arrangement, one for washing and one for drying the vessels. Water staging around the sink area leads to a wet floor. Users have to dry the floor every time to make sure that no one slips through the wet floor. This is an important factor to consider for users' safety.
MTI Good Kitchen
Summary of Good Kitchen Case Study. The case is about the "The Good Kitchen", which includes a project in the city of Holstebro that hires Hatch-Bloom for the senior citizen menu creation, and we can also see how the senior citizens are embarrassed to receive government assistance initially because their power to choose food no longer exists, which is painful for them to see.
Good Kitchen Story
Design Thinking
The good Kitchen Case study.docx
The good kitchen Case In autumn 2007 the Danish innovation and design agency Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new meal service for The Municipality of Holstebro. Six month later the idea for The Good Kitchen was created. Thus the way was cleared for a new type of meal service in Denmark, a meal service with more quality, more flexibility and more freedom of choice.
Case Study: Enhancing the Kitchen Experience.
This is a "Design Thinking" based case study; to enhance the kitchen experience. Coming from Mechanical background, and having that knack for designing and creating new things inspired me to ...
Case Study #1
Ella's Kitchen Case Study 5 consumers in the UK has increased by approximately 1.4% from 2018 to 2019, and despite the increased cost of production associated with vegetable-based food products, an increase in consumers' income can help overcome the negative affect on performance and retain good market share. Adapting to New Challenges and Maintaining Commercial Viability As a manager, one of ...

The Good Kitchen

How Design Thinking is used to improve the life quality of Denmark’s elderly

Lessons Learned from the Good Kitchen Story

Consider and engage with the whole system

Think of the scope as a hypotheses

Get feedback along the process

Ethnography is a very powerful tool for Design Thinking

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Table of contents

Municipality of Holstebro, Denmark > The Good Kitchen: How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People

Ethnographic Research: Learning to See What is?

Understanding Kitchen Employees

Understanding Seniors

Stakeholder Workshops: Hatching & Blooming

Prototyping with Customers

From Public-Sector Food-Service Employees to Restaurant Chefs

From Hospitable Food Service to the Good Kitchen

The Good Kitchen Becomes Part of the Family

Results: The Proof Is in the Pudding

What Do We Take Away from the Good Kitchen Story?

If you liked "Municipality of Holstebro, Denmark > The Good Kitchen", these stories might also be of interest to you:

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The Good Kitchen

The briefing

Challenges for Danish meal service

The process

Participatory Design

A kitchen with great added value

Increased user insight and dialogue

New dishes and higher food quality

Guest menus and kitchen specialties

How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People

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