Cool & Fresh Delivery

Despite the strong performance of e-commerce in 2020, online sales of fresh, chilled food remain limited at this time. However, the latest market figures indicate that this category has high growth rates, showing great market potential for online sales of fresh foods.

Goal

This project aims to create guidelines for a logistics model that is legally sound, economically feasible, and scalable. This model will also explore potential integration with existing last-mile logistics. Participants may further elaborate on these guidelines in their business cases after the project. The project will investigate the opportunities in both the national and international e-commerce market, considering both B2C and B2B contexts.

In cooperation with:

Results

• A survey conducted during the project showed that 28% of online consumers were already buying fresh food online.
• This evolution offers new opportunities for fresh food providers and also for logistics service providers. However, a lack of knowledge often appears to be the reason why companies have not yet started using it.
• Home deliveries mean transporting smaller quantities to many more different addresses. Even for many logistics service providers, who are familiar with home deliveries, the transport of fresh products has not yet been established.

VIL and Flanders’ FOOD have formulated clear recommendations for companies that want to get started with e-commerce for fresh food:

• An actively refrigerated delivery (including through the use of refrigerated trucks);
• A transparent delivery process with confirmation of the chosen time slot (of no more than two hours).
• An up-to-date track-and-trace system.
• Adapted procedure for absent customers at the time of delivery.
• The cold chain must be maintained and adequately monitored throughout the entire process.