Creating real impact: Menuva's launch at Warwick

Undergraduate student, Duke Saputra shares how his experience at WBS and his placement year at Microsoft inspired and prepared him for a new venture building an app to support eating out on campus. 

In July 2025, I started building Menuva out of a simple frustration: menus are often undiscoverable and inaccessible.

Gen Zs often search menus in advance, yet the reality is far from ideal — venues frequently only have in‑person menus, hide prices, or redirect to blurry images. Add the rise of ordering anxiety in younger diners, and this small interface problem becomes a real inclusion issue.

Menuva is my attempt to fix that experience. It’s a digital menu platform that makes dining in simpler and more accessible for diners while giving restaurants a central, easily updated menu that improves clarity and confidence without new hardware or major operational change.

Where it all began…

During my placement year at Microsoft (July 2024 to June 2025), I would see the same recurring issues when eating out, be that with clients or colleagues. From failing to find proper online menus before visiting or a lack of clarity on whether items had specific allergens, there was a clear problem that needed to be solved.

Fortunately, my time at Microsoft has equipped me with the skills and knowledge necessary to release products responsibly. Building Menuva forced me to prioritise security, scalability, and operational realism earlier than typical student projects. It prepared me to manage a complex initiative with many moving parts while balancing time, stakeholders, and quality. Receiving Microsoft’s Early in Career Award became a testament to the consistent dedication to execution.

Studying for a BSc in Management with a Placement Year and Entrepreneurship further provided a strong foundation, both concept-wise and in execution. The Design Thinking for Digital Innovation module grounded my process in empathy and observation rather than just features, ensuring clarity and accessibility remained central. Meanwhile, the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Lean Startup modules reinforced resourcefulness, shipping with constraints, iterating fast, and being comfortable when the concept needs to change.

Menuva today

Currently, Menuva is an iOS‑native app built to support a live pilot launch on 12 January 2026 (Term 2 Week 1) across five Warwick venues: Coffee Lab (IBRB, Oculus, Library, Social Sciences) and District (WBS). Diners can view menus in advance, filter by dietary requirements, translate into Chinese, convert prices into their home currency, sort by nutrition/price/alphabetical order, and build a digital basket to show staff, which helps reduce ordering anxiety.

Making Menuva a reality

Menuva didn’t become credible simply because I had a polished prototype; it became credible through real‑world validation. In addition to initial observations, I conducted over 40 interviews with restaurant managers, waiters, till operators, students, and diners from different segments. The first turning point was seeing the same problems appear consistently across people whom I had never met. The second turning point came when follow‑up interviews and prototype observations produced feedback that was both positive and constructively critical, and each cycle pushed the product in a clearer direction.

One insight was that online menus “solve” discovery by listing items, but fail to help people keep track of what they actually want. People forget, hesitate, and panic when reciting their order; some even write it down or memorise it before arriving. This directly led to the digital basket feature, which reduces ordering anxiety.

A major milestone is my partnership with Eatwise for this pilot, which turned Menuva from a promising idea into a real‑world test on a meaningful platform.

What's next

During the pilot, I’m aiming for at least 400 users to try Menuva, with a stretch goal of over 1,000 and an early retention target of 30%. I’m also targeting a Net Promoter Score of 60+, and — more importantly — detailed feedback from partner venues and diners to guide Menuva’s direction. The real goal isn’t to “finish” Menuva; it’s to learn fast and prove that inclusive design can become the easy default in hospitality. 

Find out more and download the app.