Hy-Vee: Connected Food Hall and Bakery Ordering

Hy-Vee, headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, brought together grocery shopping, freshly prepared meals and specialty bakery services in a new generation of flagship stores. Its food-hall experience gave customers a choice of restaurant concepts and the option to sit down for a meal or take food away.

Visionmax delivered software for a seven-restaurant food-court ordering concept and the Cake This bakery, with deployment across 10 flagship stores in the U.S. Midwest. The work connected customer-facing kiosks with the staff and systems responsible for preparing and fulfilling each order.

The two ordering journeys had different needs: food-hall meals required coordinated preparation and service, while customized cakes needed to be captured accurately and scheduled ahead of the customer’s pickup.

A food-court order could involve items from several restaurant concepts. The customer needed a straightforward ordering experience, while staff needed the order split into the work required at the appropriate preparation stations and coordinated for pickup or delivery to a seated guest.

Bakery ordering added a different kind of complexity. Customers needed to configure a cake, communicate their choices and place an order for a future day. Bakery staff needed a clear record of what to make and when it was required.

Payment and customer communication also had to fit store operations. Cash orders needed to connect to the existing POS, and customers needed order summaries and a reliable way to know when their food was ready.

The business requirement extended beyond the kiosk screen: Hy-Vee needed the customer’s choices to carry through payment, kitchen or bakery preparation, and final handoff.

Visionmax implemented its Visionmax Enterprise Customer Order Management platform, VECOM, for the restaurant and bakery kiosk experiences, with integrated workflows for preparation, fulfillment and customer communication.

Food-hall ordering: Customers could browse restaurant offerings, configure their selections and place orders for dine-in or takeout. The kiosk experience supported the variety of a seven-restaurant food-court concept within a shared ordering workflow.

Kitchen preparation and order splitting: The system split orders into the relevant preparation work and gave kitchen operators tools to manage progress. Pickup and table-delivery coordination connected that preparation work to the way the customer chose to receive the meal.

Cake This advance ordering: A dedicated bakery kiosk guided customers through cake selection and customization, including product options, decoration and personalized messaging. Customers could place day-ahead orders, while bakery order management gave staff the details needed to plan and prepare them.

POS and cash-payment integration: Kiosk orders connected with the store POS so cash-paying customers could complete payment through the established checkout process. This kept the food-ordering workflow aligned with the store’s payment operations.

Customer communication: Email order summaries provided a record of the customer’s selections. SMS notifications let customers know when orders were ready for pickup, supporting the handoff between digital ordering and in-store service.

Cookie Shop expansion: Hy-Vee subsequently deployed a Cookie Shop kiosk experience as a follow-on phase. The project extended the restaurant and bakery ordering foundation to cookie purchases and assortments, reusing the established platform and management approach for a new in-store concept.

The rollout brought connected restaurant and bakery ordering to 10 Hy-Vee flagship stores across the U.S. Midwest.

For food-hall customers, kiosk ordering connected menu selection with coordinated kitchen preparation and the choice of pickup or sit-down service. For staff, order splitting and preparation management provided the workflow needed to handle orders involving multiple restaurant concepts.

For Cake This, customers could configure bakery orders in advance, and staff could work from the captured order details and required pickup day. Email summaries and SMS pickup notifications extended the ordering experience beyond the kiosk.

The subsequent Cookie Shop deployment showed how the same ordering foundation could be extended to support another store concept.

The project supported Hy-Vee’s expanded in-store dining and bakery experience by connecting customer choice, existing POS payments, preparation and fulfillment in one operational process.