Proven in the field
You can't keep New York City waiting...especially for dinner.
THE BUSINESS
Jimmy Kostro has a unique business challenge. His company, Meal Plan Delivery, delivers dinner for up to 1000 hungry New Yorkers in the highly congested greater New York City area three times per week. Each Meal Plan Delivery driver has only 4 hours to complete up to 30 deliveries. Each delivery has its’ own very narrow and specific delivery time window. If the meal deliveries are late, there are no second chances - these are hungry New Yorkers we are talking about, after all.
THE PROBLEM
Jimmy’s process of routing his deliveries and drivers was complex. It consisted of separate applications to manage the incoming order and optimize each driver's route. Dispatchers would spend 2-3 man hours per delivery day to transfer data from one application to the other, review “optimized” routes, and manually make any needed adjustments for specific delivery schedules. Not surprisingly, the inefficient process and system wasn’t achieving the results Jimmy needed.
“We tried every optimization software we could find; Route Savvy, Ontime 360, MapPoint, Maptitude-- you name it. None of these applications could deal with the rigorous scheduling demands of our business. We knew there had to be a better way.”
The need to find that “better way” became critical when Meal Plan Delivery’s customer base doubled overnight with the signing of a new partner. The ensuing chaos resulted in too many late deliveries and inefficient routes. “I needed a robust, dynamic routing solution, and I needed it right away!”
THE SOLUTION
Jimmy turned to Greenlight.
“Greenlight is THE answer. I was able to reduce my fleet cost by 20% almost immediately. In addition, what was taking my dispatchers 2-3 hours to process now took 5 minutes. My on-time delivery rate went up. Greenlight has become a critical application for my business.”
— Jimmy Kostro - Founder Meal Plan Delivery
Jimmy continues
“The biggest challenge we had early on was to get drivers to actually follow the Greenlight optimized delivery sequences. Some of the drivers initially thought they could outperform the optimized route by delivering orders out of sequence. For instance, they made deliveries out of sequence to nearby stops early on their route. It intuitively made sense when looking at a map as the location was close by. But in our business, every minute counts, and these deviations had a devastating ripple effect down the line, resulting in late delivery windows. After the first week, we drilled it into the drivers that they had to follow the optimized sequence, no exceptions. When they followed the routes, the magic happened-- efficiency went way up and late deliveries dropped! ”. With the New York region stabilized, Jimmy is now deploying Greenlight for Meal Plan Delivery in his other regions in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Florida.
“Greenlight solves what has been a major headache for us and gives us the ability to scale and expand our business going forward. My advice: Just try it. It will change your business for the better”
— Jimmy Kostro - Founder Meal Plan Delivery