Sending fresh foods and perishable items to customers comes with lots of additional challenges when compared to sending non-perishable goods. You’re on a tighter schedule to deliver items before they spoil and must ensure you package foods properly to avoid damage.
Successfully and safely delivering perishable goods to your customers can enhance business success in a number of ways. It can enhance customer satisfaction, customer retention, word-of-mouth marketing, and business reputation.
Below, we have discussed some of the best practices to follow when you’re sending perishable goods to customers.
Work with a Reliable Courier
The courier you choose when sending packages to customers is an important consideration. It’s essential to choose a reliable courier, ideally one that offers a rush, same-day, or next-day delivery, such as Texas Couriers.
A courier company that can ensure the rapid and reliable delivery of perishable goods gives you peace of mind. It reduces the risk of foods showing up at your customers’ doors damaged or spoilt, thereby reducing the risk of dissatisfied customers.
Avoid Roadworks and Congestion
Although you can’t always predict when the traffic will be heavy or when new roadworks will appear, you can generally avoid them with effective route planning. Choose the shortest, simplest routes whenever possible to streamline the delivery process and avoid delays in delivering perishable goods.
Use navigation apps that update in real-time to show you the quickest route to a specific destination and enable you to filter out routes that contain roadworks and traffic congestion. Filtering these routes and choosing quieter roads ensures your delivery drivers can deliver orders safely and promptly, and reduce the risk of delivery truck accidents.
Consider Temperature-Controlled Packaging
Choosing the right packaging or protecting fresh foods and other perishable goods is vital. Temperature-controlled packaging maintains the optimal environmental temperature for foods during transit to ensure they stay fresh until they arrive at customers’ homes.
Make sure your packaging is the correct size for your items. Using too-large packages leaves excess space for your items to move around, increasing the risk of damage and spoiling.
If you can only access packages of a certain size, use padding materials to fill extra space, making sure the padding doesn’t increase the internal temperature of the package. Again, this is where temperature-controlled packaging is ideal. It will ensure your items are adequately insulated and ventilated for longevity and freshness.
Use Stackable Storage Solutions During Delivery
Stackable racks and shelves enable you to transport a high volume of goods in a single vehicle whilst reducing the risk of damage.
You can store customer orders in boxes and stack them safely on top of one another to prevent individual foods from getting bruised, spoilt, or crushed. In turn, you can build a reputation for providing high-quality goods and a reliable delivery service.
