Buzzarek
A farm-to-table group-buying platform for Poznań — built community-first, product second.
Local food producers in Poznań had no direct channel to consumers who cared about where their food came from. Existing platforms were too broad, too expensive, or too complex for small growers.
- Role
- Founder & Designer
- Scope
- UX Research · Product Design · Community Validation
- Client
- Personal Project
- When
- 2023
02Problem
The hypothesis: if people could buy fresh produce directly from local farms — with group discounts as the incentive — they would. But would producers trust a platform that didn't exist yet?
03Approach
I founded Buzzarek to test that hypothesis without building first: WhatsApp for validation, relationships with growers, consumer research in the community, then UX, brand, and an MVP handoff once demand was real.
Scope of work
04Challenges
_Producent vs konsument — dwa zupełnie różne produkty
Producers needed a simple way to list fresh inventory with short shelf life. Consumers wanted a scrollable feed of what's available today — like Instagram but for local food. Designing one interface that served both without creating two separate apps was the core challenge.
→Build one PWA with separate entry paths — a lightweight producer listing flow focused on stock and pickup windows, and a scroll-first consumer feed for discovery — sharing brand and order logic underneath without forcing both sides through the same screens.
_WhatsApp vs aplikacja — za szybkie przejście
The WhatsApp group worked because people self-organized and built trust manually. Moving to a PWA too quickly risked losing that trust before the product could replace it. The MVP shipped before the community was ready for it.
→In hindsight, the validation phase needed more time. The WhatsApp process should have been mapped more carefully — what exactly made it work — before translating it into product flows. The lesson: manual processes reveal UX requirements that assumptions don't.
_Group buying mechanics vs simplicity
Group discounts require coordination — enough people need to commit before a price drops. This is complex to explain and even harder to design. How do you make a group-buying mechanic feel effortless to a first-time user?
→Surface group progress directly on product cards — who's in, how many spots left, when the price unlocks — and keep copy plain-language so commitment feels like joining neighbors, not reading terms of a promotion.
05Outcome
150+
Community members validated
12
Local producers onboarded
1
MVP shipped
Featured in Poznań press and radio. The WhatsApp community proved strong demand — the platform reached MVP stage. Key learning: community trust built manually is harder to replicate in software than it looks.
06Reflection
The WhatsApp group taught me something I didn't expect: the friction was the feature. People coordinating manually, texting each other about what to buy — that was the social glue. When we moved to an app, we removed the friction and accidentally removed the community with it. I'd design the transition much more carefully next time.
If I did it again
Map the WhatsApp flow in detail before designing the app. Identify which parts of the manual process created trust — and protect them in the digital version. Slow down the transition from validation to product.