Foodics
Embedded Design Team and Design System
Foodics — Embedded Design Team & Design System
How Phoenux became Foodics' embedded design function and helped take market share from 70% to 95%.
What We Delivered
What We Did
Embedded Design Team, Design Systems, UI/UX Design, Rapid Prototyping, Localization & Arabic-First UX, Design Operations, Team Scaling & Mentorship
Project Snapshot
- Engagement
- 5 Years
- Platform
- Design System + Embedded Team
- Industry
- Restaurant Tech / SaaS · MENA
Overview
Design Debt at Hypergrowth Speed
Foodics was expanding fast across the Middle East, through new acquisitions, and across a growing product suite spanning POS, online ordering, and payments.
The challenge wasn't simply that screens looked inconsistent. The bigger question was: How does a fast-growing SaaS platform keep design coherent as its footprint doubles?
Before designing anything, Phoenux looked at how Foodics' design function actually worked — how teams were structured, where decisions got made, what caused rework, how consistent the product felt across pods, and where the existing setup created friction.
The goal was to understand the real problems inside a scaling design organization and build a function that made sense for the product, the teams, and the pace of growth.
Challenges
Growth Doesn't Wait for Design to Catch Up
A product this size is shaped by far more than any single screen.
Teams were scattered across Germany, the wider EU, and the Philippines — each producing designs that looked different and followed no single standard. After acquiring Solo App, fragmentation deepened: new systems, new teams, and no clear workflow.
And unlike a single product built by one team, Foodics' design had to hold together across pods, regions, and a fast-moving acquisition.
We needed to account for:
- Multiple product pods each moving at their own pace
- No shared design system or component language
- Newly acquired teams and tooling to fold in
- Regional and language requirements across MENA
- Sales and enterprise deals that depended on design speed
- Future products the platform needed to accommodate
The challenge was to build a function that worked within the reality of a fast-scaling company, rather than designing an idealized process in isolation.
Perspective shift
The Screens Weren't the Problem. The System Behind Them Was.
Instead of asking:
“How should each product pod's UI look?”
We asked:
“How does Foodics build design capacity that scales with the business?”
That changed the direction of the project.
We looked at the problem from the inside — how design decisions were made, where handoffs slowed engineering down, how new pods got design support, and what it would take for design to move as fast as the business. This helped us identify where a system could reduce rework, improve consistency, and let design keep pace with growth instead of trailing it. Design became an operating problem before it became a visual problem.
Transformation
From Freelance Fixes to an Embedded Function
Phoenux worked closely with Foodics' product leadership, product managers, and engineering teams across pods to understand how the organization actually built software. Rather than treating each request as a separate design task, we connected the pieces.
We considered:
- Product and engineering needs across pods
- Existing workflows and tooling
- The newly acquired Solo App teams
- Regional and language requirements
- Brand consistency across touchpoints
- Sales and enterprise timelines
- Future growth and new product lines
This allowed us to frame the solution around the design function itself, with the embedded team and design system becoming the tools to support that function.
Solution
Designing Around the Real Growth Journey
Our work began with understanding where Foodics' product teams experienced friction. We mapped how pods worked, examined how design decisions were made and handed off, and evaluated the gap between Foodics' pace of growth and its design capacity. From there, we translated those findings into a practical operating model.
Understand the Product
We studied the pods Foodics needed to serve and the constraints each one worked under.
- •Identify each pod's design and workflow needs
- •Understand how design requests moved through the org
- •Map where handoffs slowed engineering down
- •Identify moments of inconsistency and rework
Understand the Market
The solution had to work within Foodics' regional and operational reality.
- •Consider MENA market and language expectations
- •Align design output with sales and enterprise timelines
- •Understand the newly acquired Solo App teams and tooling
- •Identify opportunities to speed up design-to-ship time
Frame the Right Solutions
Instead of jumping directly into components, we prioritized problems and translated them into structural opportunities.
- •Restructure the design function around embedded ownership
- •Simplify handoffs between design, product, and engineering
- •Create a shared design language across pods
- •Define a scalable framework for future product lines
Bring the Experience to Life
Only after the operating model was established did we move into execution.
- •An embedded design team spanning key product pods
- •A unified design system across all pods
- •An Arabic-first, MENA-localized design language
- •A rapid prototyping capability for sales and enterprise pitches
- •Onboarding, mentorship, and quality review processes
- •Supporting visual and brand assets
From Team to Function
Building Design Capability
Three designers grew into a five-person design function, supported by the people, processes, and quality systems to scale.
Phoenux started small — three designers embedded across the Online Ordering, Cashier, and Banking pods. Within months, the impact was visible, and Foodics expanded the team to five designers operating like an internal design department. Phoenux handled recruitment, onboarding, and ongoing mentorship, and ran design reviews and quality control so Foodics leadership could focus on outcomes, not supervision.
“With five designers, Foodics operated like a fifteen-person design department without the overhead or HR friction.”
The assets were the final expression of a much larger operating shift.
From insight to experience
Designing Within Regional and Operational Constraints
One of the most important parts of the project was recognizing that Foodics couldn't simply adopt a generic global SaaS design template. The system needed to feel relevant to its region, its sales motion, and the reality of running five product pods at once.
Scaling design for MENA meant more than translation. Foodics provided Arabic-speaking interns, and Phoenux trained them to understand the brand's tone, UX language, and user behavior — bridging cultural nuance, visual preference, and usability patterns unique to Arabic-first users.
This resulted in a design system built to work across the realities of a multi-pod, multi-region product, rather than treating any one pod as the standard the others had to match.
Designing for consistency
Making Every Pod Feel Like One Product
A fragmented product already feels harder to trust.
Our role was to remove the inconsistency wherever it showed up. We focused on:
- •A single source of truth for components and patterns
- •Faster, clearer design handoffs to engineering
- •Predictable interaction patterns across pods
- •An Arabic-first layout standard, not a translated afterthought
- •Reduced onboarding time for new embedded designers
- •Reduced rework across product teams
The objective wasn't to make any one screen impressive. It was to make the whole product feel like it came from one team.
System meets speed
Giving the Business a Design Function It Could Rely On
Once the operating model was clear, speed became possible.
When Foodics' sales team needed to impress a global brand, Phoenux delivered fast. Phoenux built an overnight prototype for a Foodics pitch to Dunkin' Donuts in 12 hours, and that prototype closed the deal. Over time, Foodics used Phoenux-built prototypes to pitch and win several major enterprise clients, each driving expansion and credibility in new markets.
That speed was carried across digital touchpoints, creating a more cohesive experience between what sales pitched and what shipped.
The Result
A Design Function Grounded in the Real Business
The project gave Foodics more than a design system. It created a foundation for a design function that is:
More Consistent
Every pod, every platform, unmistakably Foodics.
Faster to Ship
Design handoffs sped up and rework dropped across pods.
Regionally Relevant
An Arabic-first, MENA-native design language built for the market Foodics actually serves.
Connected Across Pods
Online ordering, cashier, and banking pods work together rather than independently.
Built to Evolve
An embedded, scalable structure supports future pods and product lines.
Value Phoenux Added
From Scaling Challenge to Design Function
Phoenux helped Foodics define what its design function needed to become — and built the structure, team, and systems to make it scale with the business.
Structure
A Design Function Built to Scale
Operating structure and embedded delivery gave design a clearer role in the product process and helped the team keep pace with a rapidly growing business.
Context
Design Grounded in Regional Needs
Regional context, rapid prototyping, and close collaboration helped turn complex market needs into clearer, more relevant product experiences.
Impact
70% → 95% Market Share
Foodics' market share in its core segment grew from 70% to 95% during the partnership. The system came last. The thinking came first.
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