this company packs and delivers a
hundred thousand grocery orders to
hungry new yorkers every week
freshdirect's process of shipping highly
customized grocery boxes
straight to customer stores cuts the
grocery supply chain in half
and it all happens from this facility in
the bronx the size of 11 football fields
we're a super high velocity grocery
store so we're receiving lots of food
every day
it's coming in going right back out but
getting a box like this delivered on
time to the right
door is a logistical nightmare when you
think about millions of items that are
coming in and going out of this building
in a single week there's a lot of
complexity around that
normally it takes a team of 3 200 people
and a sophisticated ai system to get it
all done
but by march the company could barely
keep up with a wild spike in orders
in a pandemic a lot of people just kind
of scared to go outside and we help
eliminate the scariness
we visited the fresh direct facility in
early september to see how the company
manages on-time delivery
in the face of pandemic demand
today is actually the busiest day we'll
have had since january
so as people return to school and people
return back home from their vacations
from the summer
they tend to stock up heavily
freshdirect began delivering groceries
to new yorkers back in 2002.
at the time the model was revolutionary
freshdirect's supply chain is just three
steps
from the farm into our building directly
to the consumer's house
the new model cuts out three to four
steps from the normal grocery store
supply chain
customers can fill carts and order
online or through the app
just like a regular grocery store
freshdirect sells everything from
toothpaste and toilet paper
to produce fresh meats and prepared
meals if you think about a normal
produce selection
you might find two or three hundred
different types of produces we have
anywhere from four to six hundred
depending on the time of the year
about sixty five percent of our product
is what we consider fresh be it meat
seafood or deli or from our kitchen
or fresh produces and cheeses and such
today fresh direct sources from over 100
partner farms across the world
all that food comes into fresh direct's
headquarters here in the bronx
today we have about 120 trucks inbound
over a million pounds of produce come
through the receiving area each week
from help with farms we're getting
everything from these cherry tomatoes
that you saw to these bean steaks to
these tomatillos
this load of fresh berries will be in
the building for less than 24 hours
first the incoming inventory is checked
for quality and quantity
and then put into the tracking system so
you can see he's putting out these
labels
and i captured all the information on
that barcode and what happens from here
is we're actually directing the food
to where it has to go so in that system
it knows those tomatoes what place they
have to go within the warehouse
next the new inventory is moved to all
the appropriate fridges or storage areas
pantry and shelf stable goods are
forklifted onto these giant inventory
walls
some goods are moved through this
facility in as little as an hour and a
half
but you could actually read the dates
and those labels and you'll see they're
all about a week or less old what's
insane is the speed at which it moves
fresh produce ends up in temperature
controlled fridges
there are 38 different temperature zones
throughout this facility
for example bananas they like about 65
degrees
they're like a certain amount of
humidity a traditional grocery store is
built with temperatures that make
human shoppers happy you as a consumer
could walk into a bricks and mortar
grocery store in the middle of the
summer in shorts and flip-flops and be
totally comfortable it's not good for
the food
because it detracts from the shelf life
there's no food on display
here all that food is tucked away on ice
in the proper temperature and is only
taken out when it's needed so we just
have
less waste as opposed to a bricks and
mortar store
freshdirect says catering to a food's
ideal climate extends its shelf life up
to seven days beyond a traditional
grocery stores
we have a room that's at 55 degrees for
things like tomatoes
where we went 45 degrees things like
onions and potatoes they're like colder
temperatures
there's a separate inventory room for
meat and even fish
this fish is probably two days out of
the water and it's here from nova scotia
so our fishermen
they actually go out these are harpoon
caught swordfish 368 pounds
the supply chain has such a tight
turnaround that a customer could place
an order for a fish in
say alaska and within a day or two it'll
be fished out and flown to this facility
there are times where we could sell fish
to a consumer five days out
that's not actually landed in a boat yet
once all the items are inventoried they
don't sit around long
before they're picked up and tugged to
one of 12 kitchens
fruits and veggies for pre-cut packages
are chopped in one room
upstairs the bakery starts buzzing in
the early morning downstairs
we could do anywhere from 13 to 18 000
finished goods per day
these chefs make more than 500 different
prepared dishes
in the cold room they're pulling
together shrimp cocktails ravioli
cheeseboards and salads in the hot room
it's salmon stews chicken fingers
and one of the most popular items
rotisserie chicken
down the hall fish are filleted yeah
hovie actually also has some black cod
right there also known as butter fish or
sable fish
out of british columbia hovie how many
years cutting fish 28 years
on a promo he'll cut close to a thousand
pounds of fish a day
and here over 250 cuts of meat are
butchered a day
they're sliced right as orders come in
to help cut down on food waste
but when kobe 19 hit meat orders spiked
so much the team had to lessen the
variety of meat cuts until they could
catch up with the demand
we took a look at that volume and said
okay these are the stakes that we have
the most volume on these are the things
that we're going to feature
once workers finish preparing all the
food the real work begins
pulling all the items for an order
together the average order fresh direct
gets is about 30 items
which might not sound like a lot but on
a relatively busy week now we're
delivering to
north of a hundred thousand houses and
if each of those houses has
30 items in their delivery we're moving
three million different food items
out of in essence one mega facility
each order that comes in gets assigned a
box to make sure all 30 items end up in
the right box
the company has been perfecting an ai
system for nearly two decades
the system tracks when each item comes
in and the expiration date
then it finds the most efficient route
along nine miles of conveyor belts to
move the box to all the right pick
stations
each pick station has one worker and a
selection of products the worker grabs
from and places in the corresponding box
this picker has pantry goods and
toiletries at her station
so it tells her what item she'll scan it
it'll verify it's the right item
she'll confirm that she put in the
customer's bag and that will go to the
next person
but you can see the speed with which you
can pick these items rather than walking
around a store all day the work comes to
her
but it isn't set up like a normal
grocery store where all the say tomato
sauces are together
to even out the workload high ticket
items like olive oil
are paired with lower ticket items like
organic baby food at one pick station
we call it slotting the building so the
fewer stops that we make in our store
with our totes as they go through the
more efficient we can be
the goods are also grouped at pick
stations based on affinity
so the people that would buy this tea
have an affinity to buying other
products that are here such as the lawn
drink
or the dry rose cider after a worker
picks the right item they hit a green
button and the order box zooms off to
the next station
after visiting sometimes dozens of pix
stations an order can finally be
complete
it goes through one last check before
being loaded on a fresh direct truck
so as soon as the product gets here our
goal is to have it here less than two
days and back out the door so there's
literally thousands and thousands of
bags that go to shipping every hour on
the outbound side there's over 400
trucks going out with deliveries
those trucks run 2 000 routes each week
we've got a refrigerator in the back of
the truck so everything is already
staying cold
john's a 12-year veteran driver for
freshdirect he typically does routes
around new york city but
sometimes takes deliveries all the way
out to the hamptons so i start at four
and coming from the hamptons i'm getting
back like four four thirty so the
traffic coming back is ridiculous
the pandemic caused an 800 surge in new
website traffic and increased demand for
fresh direct
but orders aren't just coming in from
new yorkers worried about leaving their
apartments
a surprising amount of demand came from
new yorkers who fled to the suburbs
that's been a new area of growth for us
even as demand spread out
freshdirect's hub and spoke model
allowed the company to quickly ramp up
delivery to more coverage zones
freshdirect expanded to new jersey
connecticut westchester county
and long island by the end of 2020 the
company plans to add a thousand new
workers to match demand
freshdirect's success is indicative of a
larger trend in shopping habits
in 2019 e-grocers held 3.4 percent of
the grocery market
and in 2020 it's expected to hit 10.2
percent
here we are in september looking at
probably the biggest growth we've ever
seen
and just each month it gets bigger and
covered 19 opened up the floodgates for
online grocery
and i don't think we'll ever go back
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