Grocery & Prescription Delivery
Connecting complex ecosystems to make an everyday errand easier
Lead Product Designer, Pharmacy. Strategy · Service Design · UX Architecture · Interaction Design · Cross-functional Alignment
Role
Product, Engineering, eCommerce Design, Associate Experience, Architecture, Legal & Compliance, Pharmacy Operations, Instacart
Partners
Timeline
Q1 2025-2026
The Challenge
One customer journey. Two very different systems.
Combining prescriptions and groceries isn’t simply adding prescriptions to a grocery cart. Pharmacy and grocery operate under different authentication requirements, technical systems, operational workflows, fulfillment models, and privacy constraints.
Early concepts were being hatched before pharmacy requirements were fully represented. When my team got involved, it became clear that the proposed solution introduced significant feasibility and privacy concerns.
Before designing screens, we needed to redefine how the service itself could work with the existing pharmacy system architecture and compliance constraints.
Where do the stars align?
Graphing all that needed to be true for this solution to work seamlessly and pinpointing the gaps.
Reframing the Problem
Pharmacists, pharmacy systems, store associates, and third-party shoppers are all part of the same service journey.
Customers could have prescriptions at multiple pharmacy locations.
Not every prescription is eligible for delivery.
Delivery availability could vary by store.
Prescription data can’t freely pass into the grocery ecosystem.
Authentication and session requirements differ.
Getting the physical prescription from the pharmacy to the patient’s doorstep requires all kinds of special handling.
What initially looked like a simple systems problem was actually a cross-channel service-design problem spanning healthcare, grocery, store operations, and third-party fulfillment.
Translating these constraints into low-fidelity flows gave leadership, product, and engineering something concrete to react to and helped establish pharmacy as a core partner in defining the experience rather than a downstream dependency.
Start securely in Pharmacy. Transition seamlessly into Grocery.
Working closely with product, engineering, architecture, legal, and compliance, we established an MVP architecture that could protect sensitive prescription information without introducing complexity to the customer. By starting the experience within the prescription management tool, the complexity stays behind the scenes.
Net new service launch Q1 2026
The national launch ultimately expanded Grocery & Prescription Delivery across nearly all Kroger banners and more than 2,200 pharmacy locations, allowing customers to receive eligible prescriptions and groceries together through Kroger's digital experiences.
For the business, the experience creates a bridge between a highly engaged pharmacy audience and Kroger's eCommerce ecosystem. For customers, it combines two very important errands into one convenient delivery order.
Learnings
It took many collaborators and an understanding of pharmacy operations, privacy, authentication, grocery fulfillment, and technical architecture to determine what experience could exist for an MVP, while minimizing that complexity for the customer.
I moved to another product area after the MVP, so I won't be leading its next phase. But I'm proud of the foundation we established.
What began as two disconnected journeys became a nationally launched service that lets customers manage groceries and prescriptions in one digital session.
That's the kind of product design I find most meaningful: solving complexity across systems so people experience something simpler.