Product Design 0→1
Research
2019 ∙ My Big Love
Russia

Moscow has a lot of wine bars, and most of them feel the same. My Big Love was still being built, but the owner already knew a paper menu couldn’t work — not with a cellar of around 2,000 wines. The plan was to design a digital environment from scratch: an iPad menu for the venue, a loyalty app, and an online shop.

I was the only product designer on the project, working directly with the owner and developers across all three platforms.

Understanding the challenge

Interviews with potential guests and visits to four wine bars revealed a clear split. Most people felt out of their depth and just asked the waiter. A smaller group of enthusiasts wanted filters, ratings, and full control. The challenge was designing for both without alienating either — while helping the business sell more, build loyalty, and grow online.

Design

iPad menu for the restaurant experience

The iPad became the main menu in the restaurant from day one. Early prototypes experimented with different home screens and layouts. Because the restaurant also served food and other drinks, the first idea was a home screen split into Wine, Food, and Drinks. By the time we launched, it became clear that people primarily came for wine, so the final version focused the home screen on wine, with food and drinks available from the side navigation.

For beginners, I introduced “wine of the week,” sets, and seasonal offers to give them safe starting points instead of facing a list of two thousand bottles. Regular visitors could quickly jump into familiar categories. For enthusiasts, I added detailed filters for type, country, region, grape, year, and price, along with search. Each wine had its own page with tasting notes, basic pairing hints, region information, and visual cues so guests could understand what they were choosing without needing a sommelier every time.

We tried several variants of the list, filters, and product layout, then launched the strongest option given the development budget and the restaurant’s opening deadlines.

Mobile app and loyalty programme

The mobile app extended the experience beyond the table, combining loyalty rewards, e-commerce, and restaurant information in one platform. Every bottle in the cellar had a unique QR code. When a guest ordered a bottle in the restaurant or via the shop, staff activated that code. Guests could then scan the label in the app, see detailed information, save it, and earn “millilitres” (points) for each scan. Points accumulated in their account and could be redeemed for purchases.

The app also served as the primary online shop where guests could browse and purchase wines for delivery or pickup, plus access restaurant details like location, hours, and reservations. This mechanism gave guests a clear reason to create an account and keep using the app, while giving the restaurant a clean data trail of which wines were being bought and by whom. For shopping, the app reused a mobile-optimised web view of the online store so we could move quickly and still deliver a consistent experience.

Online shop and website

The website started as a classic restaurant site with address, opening hours, and reservations. Over time it evolved into a full e‑commerce experience. Guests could browse the same wine catalogue as in the restaurant, filter in familiar ways, and order bottles for delivery or pickup. Using a shared design system for iPad, app, and web made the whole ecosystem feel connected, so moving between channels felt natural.

Results

Increase in self-serve

Staff reported that guests asked fewer basic questions and could explore wines on their own. In many cases the iPad actually showed more detail about lesser‑known bottles than the sommelier would normally have time to explain.

18% of total revenue from online shop

Within the first three months, the online shop accounted for about 18% of total revenue, which is significant for a traditionally offline business

63% of guests signed-up in loyalty programme

Guests joined the loyalty programme, giving the restaurant a clean data trail of which wines were being bought and by whom

Internet Prize Award

The digital experience helped My Big Love stand out as a modern, technology‑driven wine bar and contributed to the restaurant receiving the Runet Prize Award for its approach to digitalisation in hospitality.

Reflection

Running several digital products in parallel on two‑week release cycles for a brand‑new restaurant was intense. New requests came in constantly while the venue was ramping up. 

To cope, I set up a lightweight design rhythm focusing each cycle on a few clear improvements, validated complex changes through quick usability tests or in‑venue observation, and brought in another designer briefly for the first simplified version of the website so I could focus on the core in‑venue (iPad menu) and in-app loyalty experience.

London, UK