Plan, procure, execute, & track transportation for every shipment across your supply chain & logistics operations
A SaaS solution to help grow your business by achieving 100% perfect order execution at high volumes
Increase vehicle capacity utilization and customer promise adherence
Grow your business with omnichannel presence and automated pickups
Consolidate shipments for hub to hub movement across land and air
Real-time customer communications and collect accurate PODs
Orchestrate logistics operations with multiple 3rd party carriers
Achieve cost effective, scalable, sustainable, and customer centric deliveries
Orchestrate all your cross-border logistics operations with ease
Improve address accuracy, ensure first-attempt delivery success, reduce costs and boost customer experience
Gain end-to-end shipment visibility, get proactive alerts, and send customers live tracking links
Grow business in a dynamic world and manage operations across First, Middle & Last mile
Delight customers by seamlessly managing store and online orders across own fleet and 3rd party
Reduce freight costs & get end to end visibility across shipments
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The complexities of food delivery logistics have snowballed into something we have not seen before. A decade back things were simple. A customer simply called her favorite restaurant, placed an order for that fish and chips and that was it, then she would wait. Wait for an hour, or maybe more depending on the restaurant’s proximity, availability of a delivery executive, whether conditions, traffic and more. In other words she was willing to compromise on certain things just to enjoy the food at the comfort of her home. That’s not the case anymore and rightly so.
Modern consumers want value for their hard earned money. They want their food to be delivered hot, properly packaged and they want it delivered fast. Not just that, driven by instant gratification, they want to know where their order is, how long it will take to prepare it, who is going to deliver it and what’s the exact ETA. These expectations introduce a slew of challenges for restaurants, fast-food joints and even food delivery aggregators, and this is exactly where the need for smart logistics management tools surfaces. Hence, the very definition of food delivery logistics have evolved.
The global online food delivery industry is going through a journey of massive growth. According to a report, its valuation stood at $126.91 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach $192.16 billion by 2025. The increasing demand for food delivery logistics can be attributed to a few major accelerators. Some of these are fast deliveries, ease of access to multiple restaurants, the comfort of eating restaurant-class food at home, online discounts and many more.
So, food delivery logistics can be defined as the process of delivering food to a customer’s doorstep or location using advanced logistics management tools to ensure faster, cost-efficient and delightful deliveries. Well, this is a simplified definition. Food delivery logistics also include managing own and hired delivery fleet, managing payments, planning routes, optimizing delivery costs, ensuring scalable logistics operations and much more.
While food delivery services have seen a growth in demand and popularity, they face a series of challenges. These roadblocks have been further accentuated by the pandemic and the evolving customer expectations. Let us take a detailed look at some of them below.
No one likes their order to get delayed. But only a restaurant realizes how difficult it can be to manage several incoming orders, prepare them, and ensure their timely delivery while maintaining quality. Delivery executives will also find it extremely challenging to reach the customer location on time in the absence of optimized routes. All this can be managed efficiently with the help of innovative food delivery logistics software.
The modern-day consumer simply has too many options and offers. Thus, it is challenging to keep them loyal to a particular outlet. A smart food delivery logistics platform provides hyper-fast deliveries by considering various factors such as in-built algorithms and dynamic routing, helping brands retain their customer base. However, offering rewards is also pivotal for brands that want to gain a loyal customer base, considering that 65% of a company’s revenue is generated from existing customers.
Markets are highly volatile and can drive inflation around the globe. The prices of food grains, spices, oil etc., can suddenly increase due to a spike in fuel prices, forcing restaurants or third-party logistics partners to charge extra from their customers. This could lead to a decrease in the number of customers ordering meals online and impact the overall revenue of restaurants. Dynamic real-time routing enables riders to overcome traffic and vehicle idling, saving time and bringing down the overall operational expenditure.
Inventory management often throws up a catch-22 situation for the food and beverages industry. Food essentials can’t be understocked as order continuity would suffer. On the other hand, there also cannot be an overstocking of items due to their perishable nature. Both situations can have a direct impact on restaurants as well as consumers. Hence, proper inventory management is essential to provide the customers uncompromised quality service. Various modern inventory management tools in food delivery logistics platforms keep a real-time tab on the online delivery orders and update inventories automatically through POS integration.
Customer dissatisfaction with delivery may arise when the restaurant is at a significant distance from the customer’s location. It isn’t easy to maintain the order quality while in transit without the option of real-time tracking. However, even after tracking it, the order quality can be compromised due to poor handling by the delivery executive. Food delivery logistics solutions allow for auto-allocation of riders at the nearest distance. Moreover, fleet capacity can also be increased with efficient route planning, ensuring customers always receive quick and uncompromised delivery services.
A standout feature of food delivery logistics platforms is integrating several payment options. Customers are now more comfortable paying via cashless modes like UPI, credit and debit cards, net banking etc. A lack of payment options could lead to a significant dip in customer satisfaction. Various food delivery logistics platforms bring in multi-payment options that enable a fast and secure transaction process.
In the absence of planning of optimized routes for deliverers, the meal might not reach the customer on time. It can lead to a poor customer experience, and the restaurant may have lost a valuable customer. Food delivery logistics platforms like Shipsy have in-built algorithms to evaluate, analyze and allocate consignments to the right vehicle. The nearest available riders within the locality are assigned for faster and hassle-free deliveries. Moreover, customers are provided with a quick link to track the delivery executives with ETAs.
A customer should be able to contact the rider or restaurant to know the real-time status of their order. A communication gap at this stage may lead to a significant delay in delivery and result in a poor customer experience. Additionally, if the delivered item does not match the customer’s expectation, they should be able to reach an executive either from the restaurant or the aggregator. A customer-friendly food delivery logistics software empowers customers with a feedback option available through mobile applications.
There are some crucial elements involved in a food delivery. It starts with the customer placing an order through different mediums such as websites, applications, social media and voice assistants (Alexa, Siri). The restaurant receives the order, processes it, dispatches it and then delivers it to the customer either through their own delivery personnel or by hiring a third-party logistics provider. Throughout this cycle, several pain points may arise, such as:
So, to ensure highly productive and cost efficient food delivery logistics operations, businesses are increasingly turning to smart food delivery management platforms. These platforms empower businesses to ensure greater visibility, provide flexible payment options, make deliveries agile, boost delivery profitability and achieve more. Let’s quickly glance through each of these crucial aspects of food delivery operations.
Ensuring high levels of delivery visibility is critical for seamless delivery operations. Modern logistics management tools provide restaurants and food chains end-to-end visibility of ground level food delivery logistics operations. Such tools empower delivery managers to see exactly where his drivers are, how far are they from a restaurant, what’s his distance from the customer’s location, what are the tasks assigned to him, what’s the route that needs to be taken and so on. These efficiencies amplify control over delivery operations drastically.
Smart food delivery logistics management tools also enhance customer experiences by sending them real-time updates on delivery progress, accurate ETAs and smart and intuitive tracking options.
Enabling end-customers to select from multiple payment options is a great way to boost their loyalty towards a restaurant. A smart delivery management platform does exactly this. Through multiple integrations it ensures customers can pay online, pay using cards, pay cash on delivery or even use secured digital wallets. Such a platform also allows food delivery providers to ensure that a customer can quickly change her payment method from COD to online or any other option based on her convenience.
No one likes a bowl of cold soup! Hence, customers want their food to be delivered fast so that quality is not compromised. Advanced route planning tools help restaurants and food delivery providers chalk out the most efficient and productive delivery routes. It considers multiple factors like, driver workload, proximity, fuel efficiency, driver availability, traffic congestions, delivery type, delivery productivity, cost, vehicle make and more while automatically generating the most efficient route.
To deliver on evolving customer expectations restaurants often tend to burn a significant amount of cash. This can be addressed using smart and AI-powered delivery management tools.
A modern food delivery logistics management platform optimizes delivery costs by automatically generating highly efficient and productive routes. This in turn shrinks fuel consumption, increases the number of pickups/deliveries completed on a single route, reduces trip volumes and miles traveled and enhances vehicle utilization. All these factors significantly contribute towards reducing the TCO of deliveries. Such a platform also ensures customer addresses are highly accurate so as to reduce delivery failures and boost first attempt success rates, again significantly reducing costs incurred in executing last-mile delivery operations.
Efficient management of delivery executives is key to profitable and delightful last-mile logistics operations. Using AI and ML powered food delivery logistics management tools restaurants can automate order scheduling, allocation and trip creation. Such tools consider multiple constraints before selecting a rider for a particular task. These can include the existing workload of a driver, proximity from restaurant, customer location, driver’s knowledge about a given locale, cost, delivery type, vehicle type, weather conditions, type of food and more.
Delivery failures and repeat delivery attempts make significant financial dents and weigh down customer experience. Providing customers with highly accurate ETAs, ensuring delivery flexibility and driving address accuracy are three key elements that help reduce delivery failures significantly.
Using advanced geocoding capabilities modern food delivery logistics solutions drastically increase the accuracy of customer addresses. Highly accurate and dynamic ETAs ensure that customers are available at the given locations. Also, by allowing customers to change delivery location and time on the fly, restaurants can further boost first-attempt success rates.
With the internet and various delivery apps available at the tip of their fingertips, customers now demand hyper-fast deliveries within minutes. Businesses in the food and beverages industry are fast-adopting food delivery logistics tools to cater to the evolving customer needs. According to a report, around 60% of Americans order food online at least once a week. Therefore, it becomes extremely crucial to understand customer expectations to make informed business decisions. Listed below are notable customer expectations while ordering food online:
The food delivery apps should offer customers a seamless interface, so they don’t face any hassles in placing their orders. Once the order is placed, notifications are sent out immediately through SMS or Whatsapp. Customers should also be able to alter contact information or reschedule deliveries through various intelligent delivery platforms. This would also ensure not only a positive but also a unique experience for each customer.
In an era where restaurant menus are available at the click of a button, customer expectations include hyper-fast services. As much as 65% of customers say they would pay extra for faster delivery. AI-enabled smart logistics platforms provide on-demand delivery experiences with real-time dynamic tracking. Timely deliveries pave the way for a satisfactory food delivery experience and improve customer retention.
Customers should receive the order without its quality being compromised, meaning that the food should retain its taste, shape, smell etc. To ensure order quality, restaurants use food delivery logistics mechanisms for seamless two-way communication between the rider and the customer. The delivery executives are also provided with the best-optimized routes to reach customer locations in the most efficient way possible.
Issues related to quality, delivery time, rider behavior etc., are bound to crop up from time to time. Customers should get an easy and quick answer to their complaints either from the restaurant or the aggregator. The resolution can be in the form of a refund, replacement order or special discount coupons. Intelligent food delivery logistics software enables the customer to gain a 360-degree view of the entire process, from order allocation to completion of delivery.
Savvy customers want to know where their orders are, who is going to deliver it, how long it will take to prepare the food and when exactly will she receive it. Hence, restaurants and food chains need to provide real-time visibility of delivery progress to their customers. They need to provide ETA that constantly gets updated based on the delivery status. Equally important is ensuring customers can change delivery location and payment mode based on their convenience that too on the fly.
Since the last decade, the food delivery industry has witnessed the emergence of specific new trends. Below are some market trends to deliver the best customer experience and stay ahead of the competition.
Climate change is a reality; hence customers are becoming more sensitive to avoiding plastic packaging and cutleries. Various food delivery logistics software, with the help of data analytics, enable the drivers to take the shortest routes, reducing fuel wastage. Faster deliveries also result in increased trip volumes with optimized routes, reducing the number of overall miles traveled and bringing down carbon emissions.
Food delivery logistics softwares come with in-built ML-powered algorithms that automatically allocate orders to the right delivery executive at the right time and in the most efficient way. This becomes a crucial process for reducing delivery turnaround time. They also provide the delivery executives with the best-optimized routes based on consignment mapping with the vehicles.
Cloud kitchens are places that only accept takeaway orders and do not provide the option of dining. Such entities are coming up rapidly as they can be set up even in small places, thus saving real estate costs. They also need fewer investments and don’t require dedicated staff. Hence these are a popular way of entering the food delivery business for new restaurateurs.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, drones and robots are now handling food delivery operations. Various food logistics delivery software has features such as auto allocation of orders, auto-scheduling and automated route planning. The delivery turnaround time and the number of steps required to complete a delivery are drastically reduced.
While setting up your food delivery logistics, one thing to keep in mind is that the customers should be able to ‘start ordering from anywhere and finish it anywhere.’ They should be able to interact with your business through different channels such as apps, social media and voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri etc. A multichannel delivery system allows brands to be present on various platforms at once and not miss out on an opportunity to provide service to the customers who need it.
Here are some more reasons to get started with a food delivery software: Click Here.
Shipsy is empowering restaurants and food chains across the globe to balance customer experience and delivery costs in the most efficient way possible. Our smart logistics management capabilities are helping businesses automate route planning, delivery scheduling, roster management and task allocation. It’s helping both hired and owned fleets to perform with high-levels of productivity. We ensure delightful delivery experiences by providing end-customers with real-time delivery visibility, flexible payments and accurate ETAs.
Here are some critical benefits the culinary industry is experiencing by using Shipsy.
To know how Shipsy can help you address your unique food delivery challenges signup for a quick demo here.
Following traditional practices for food delivery management can impact customer experience as well as business profitability. It can also cause other delivery-related challenges.
Food delivery management software can make both the small restaurants and renowned food chains to manage their delivery operations effortlessly and deliver an unmatched customer experience.
