People Behind the Platform: Employee Voting

The best pantry platform features do not start with code. They start with signals: a Slack thread full of snack requests, a DM asking for a favorite drink, a quick comment in the kitchen about what should go, and a dozen opinions scattered across email, chat, and hallway conversations.

What makes pantry decisions difficult is not a lack of input. It is the fact that employee feedback lives in one place, while consumption data lives in another. Without both in the same view, it is hard to see the full picture and make decisions with confidence.

That is exactly why we created Employee Voting, a first-of-its-kind innovation for workplace pantries.

Crafty is built for workplaces and the challenges they face every day. Employee Voting is one example of that in action, bringing employee feedback into one place inside the Crafty Platform and pairing it with real consumption data so teams can finally act on the full picture. It turns scattered opinions into clear demand signals, gives employees a direct voice in what shows up on the shelves, and helps teams make smarter pantry decisions with less guesswork and more impact.

We are pulling back the curtain on Employee Voting with Kalissa Chamopoulos, Principal Product Manager at Crafty and one of the key minds behind the feature. From the initial client signal to the final product experience, this is a look at how it came to life. We will walk through how it works, why it matters for workplace teams, and hear directly from Kalissa on what it actually took to bring it from idea to reality.

What is Employee Voting?

Instead of living across Slack threads, emails, and one-off requests, employee preferences are captured directly inside the Crafty Platform. Employees can vote on the snacks and beverages they want to see, and those signals are paired with real consumption data to give workplace teams a complete view of what is actually working.

The experience is simple:

• Browse products available in your location
• Heart your favorites
• Downvote items that are not hitting

From there, votes translate into live rankings. Workplace teams can quickly identify what to keep, what to remove, and where to invest. It is real-time insight, without the manual work, and with full control still in your hands.

Meet Kalissa

As Principal Product Manager at Crafty, Kalissa Chamopoulos is focused on turning real client feedback into features that actually work in the day to day. Her role sits between what workplace teams are asking for and how the product gets built, shaping ideas into experiences that feel intuitive, useful, and grounded in how offices really run.

With Employee Voting, that meant taking something messy and constant, employee feedback, and turning it into something structured, visible, and actionable inside the platform.

In practice, that looks like:

• Talking directly with clients to understand what is not working
• Partnering with engineering to bring those ideas to life
• Iterating quickly based on real usage and feedback

Employee Voting is a direct result of that process, which is exactly why we sat down with Kalissa to hear how it all came together.

Q&A: The Story Behind Employee Voting

Can you tell us how Employee Voting works?

It’s actually pretty simple and only takes a few clicks! Employees scan a QR code or click a link, and have 5 votes each month to browse through products they’d like in their office.

Those votes roll up into live rankings in the Crafty Platform, so workplace leaders can see what’s trending, what’s falling off, and where to make changes (again, with just a few clicks)!

What inspired the Employee Voting feature?

This one came straight from our clients! We ran a poll during our last Platform Showcase asking what people wanted to see next in the Crafty Platform, and Employee Voting was at the top of the list.

We then talked to employees at various companies, and they were also pumped about this feature, so we just had to build it!

What did you learn from the beta?

Before launching new features broadly, we test them with a small group of clients across top workplaces to learn and iterate in real time. With Employee Voting, we partnered with a handful of clients who got early access to the feature, used it in their day-to-day, and shared feedback directly with our team and even with each other. That input was critical. It helped us refine the experience, uncover gaps, and build additional functionality based on how teams were actually using it.

We learned how important a vote in the pantry is to employees (and also how much they were willing to campaign for their favorite snacks, too).

Employees want to have a voice, and workplace managers have to ensure everything still aligns to budget, usage, and overall program goals.

That pushed us to expand the experience pretty quickly, like giving our Clients the ability to tailor the list of products. This way, they can always tie it back to program goals and keep everyone happy!

Describe your role in creating this feature.

As a Principal Product Manager, I have a really fun job. My role is really about connecting what clients are asking for with how we actually build it.

That means talking to customers, figuring out pain points, and working closely with the tech team to figure out a solution.

I keep features moving from idea to build to launch and beyond... and I’m super excited about the beyond phase with this feature!

How many Diet Cokes did you drink along the way?

Honestly? We lost count somewhere between vibe coding and QA.

If I had to estimate, it’s enough to be considered a core dependency of the feature and many other features to come.

Conclusion

Employee Voting is a first-of-its-kind feature in the workplace pantry space, built to bring employee feedback and real consumption data together in one system.

Instead of juggling requests, workplace teams can see what employees want and what they actually consume in the same view, then make decisions with confidence. It is a smarter way to manage pantry programs, one that improves the employee experience, reduces waste, and helps every dollar go further.

At its core, this is what Crafty is built to do. Solve real workplace challenges with solutions that actually work in the day-to-day. Employee Voting is one example of that in action, turning a common pain point into something structured, visible, and impactful for every team managing a pantry.