Selecting the right fulfilment partner is crucial, especially for perishable products. Frozen food demands precise packaging and timely delivery. Our array of services guarantees your product's arrival in impeccable condition.
Frozen Delivered specializes in frozen food and gourmet fulfilment, offering a direct-to-consumer service. Our end-to-end process includes storage, picking, packing, and nationwide dispatch for frozen food e-commerce clients. Notably, we manufacture dry ice, essential for frozen distribution. Explore our process by clicking on the sections below.
On-Boarding Process
When we engage with a new customer we help evaluate the right packaging and storage options for you. We need samples of your packaging and other information to best advise you. When ready we send a typical package back to you free of charge so that you can assess the process.
We receive frozen products from our customers usually delivered on pallets. We unpack these deliveries into components suitable for placing on picking shelving in freezers maintained at -20°C.
We also store ambient marketing material including flyers and stickers for inclusion in the packages.
When our customer receives an order a delivery date is specified. The day before the product is delivered the following happens:
Dry ice is manufactured
2kg barrier bags are made and filled which ensures your customer doesn't come into direct contact with dry ice.These protective bags have the appropriate safety information printed on them.
Assembling the correct sized cardboard box with insulation.
Picking the food items specified by the customer.
Double checking the picked items prior to placing in the box with the barrier bag and any collateral marketing material and delivery note.
printing a courier label from the data provided.
Sealing box, and affixing courier label.
Handover to courier drivers who make sweeps throughout the day. Our overnight courier deivery service has full tracking and management of the delivery process accessible to you.
Frozen Delivered manufactures dry ice and this means that the ice is always fresh and therefore super- dense for maximum lifetime. As the dry ice (at -79 °C) keeps your food product frozen it evaporates to a gas until there is no dry ice left at which point your product will start to thaw. It is therefore essential that there is sufficient dry ice included within the packaging to last from the moment it is packed until your customer opens the box the following day.
We can receive orders at anytime but will only prepare the parcel a few hours before our couriers come to collect.
Chillistick works closely with our courier partners to ensure that if your customer is not in the frozen package is left in a safe place. To this end we add a warning label to all our packages developed with our courier to remind drivers not to return packages to depot. Our unique barrier bag system ensures that the food remains frozen for up to 36 hours.
Timings
Our office and warehouse are open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. We can receive goods on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between 9.00am to 4.00pm. Please instruct your delivery agents to avoid Mondays and Tuesdays for operational reasons. We presently package and fulfil orders Monday to Thursday thereby providing delivery windows for your customer of Tuesday to Friday.
To allow us to carry out the fulfilment tasks we need to receive final orders by 12 noon for next day delivery. Our courier makes a number of visits to us to collect, scan and put onto their network. The final collection from us is 4pm. We provide sufficient dry ice in our barrier bag system to ensure that once packed it will keep the food frozen for 36 hours. During hot Summer months we will add extra dry ice at no additional cost.
Inbound Goods
All goods are pre-booked in for delivery and we ask for a delivery note prior to ensure we can accommodate stock rotation and have staff resource available. Frozen Delivered accepts mixed pallets. We count stock in based on box numbers and contents. At the same time we carry out stock rotation to ensure that the oldest stock is packed next. Please note that it will be more expensive for us to store large number of SKUs as each product will need to be accessible on the shelf. In our experience we find a maximum of 8 - 10 SKUs works well and also reduces the number of re- stockings.
Marketing Material
One of the advantages of sending directly to your customer is the ability to offer additional items/treats and brand information. We recognise this and are happy to include this collateral material to support your brand. To simplify our packing process is is helpful if one marketing printed item is used for all of your range to reduce errors. Some clients use a sticker on the box and we can add this but we ask that this is provided on a roll to save application time.
At certain times of year some of the brands we work with like to offer special promotions. We want to support these activities but would appreciate plenty of warning so that we can arrange resources. This is particularly the case around holidays.
Packaging
We offer two sizes of box packaging consisting of a double walled cardboard outer and two denim (vegan) insulated sleeves.
As part of our pre-sales service we will carry out various checks on your food packaging to determine which box is best. We will also send a sample of your food to you for your evaluation.
The standard box has internal dimensions of 220 x 220 x 300mm. To give you an idea with the 2kg dry ice barrier bag shown below we can comfortably fit 6 x 500ml ice-cream tubs.
Both our boxes provide 2 sheets of vegan material to provide complete coverage of the food.
The large box has internal dimensions of 410 x 270 x 310 mm. This can fit 16 x 500ml ice-cream tubs and has 2 barrier bags containing 4 kg of dry ice.
The barrier bags are filled by us minutes before the food is packed. Each barrier bag is individually weighed to ensure consistent dry ice content. This is how we can be confident that your food will arrive frozen when opened by your customer.
We also have a polystyrene box with a cardboard outer which might be useful when transporting larger quantities of food possibly to a restaurant. In this case we can put two poly boxes in a single cardboard box and this reduces costs. Please contact us if this is of interest.
Order Processing - What Happens
Our IT system connects multi-channel e-commerce sites through 1 dashboard so we can process your orders. In addition there is an API courier system which allows for automatic label printing. As soon as your order is prepared, picked and packed the scanner will fulfil the order and produce the courier label. All we need is a short time to connect your site to the IT system so we can integrate and pick up orders for processing.
During the on-boarding process, We work with you to evaluate best practice based on our experience, please give us a ring to discuss further.
What Can Go Wrong?
Despite our best joint efforts things will go wrong and we would prefer to be open about this up front. In this section we cover the problems we sometimes encounter and how we deal with them:
Courier
Our courier partners are excellent. They offer a nationwide distribution on a next day service at great value and provide data on the status of individual parcels throughout the journey. Success rates run at over 98%. However, parcels can get lost in the system due to mis-routing, or address labels coming off for example. On occasions a driver may fail to make a delivery for a host of reasons non of which help us. If the product were non-perishable it could be re- delivered the following day however with frozen goods this is not an option.
Even though this is neither our fault or your fault when it happens you need to accept the loss of your food items. If agreeable to all parties we send out a replacement parcel to the customer and when this happens we are amazed at how positively your customer responds to the service, despite the delay. We however, cannot be responsible for any costs associated with non-delivery. The courier offers insurance cover for specified lost parcels but this is an expensive option, furthermore it does not cover parcels that are delayed by a coupe of days.
Customer
Sometimes customers will try and postpone a parcel if they decide to change their plans and ask for a re-schedule. This is not possible with frozen goods. To avoid this the customer needs to be advised when placing their order that a re-schedule is not possible on the day of delivery. When this happens we do not offer compensation.
US
We can make mistakes. Even though all orders are scanned and approved, sometimes somethings can go wrong in the picking process. Should this happen we will of course re-send the correct order items the next working day free of charge and we ask that any (small) stock loss is absorbed by you. We are not liable in any event for consequential loss.
Damaged & Old Stock
We sometimes see damaged containers that have been mishandled prior to reaching us. Very rarely our excellent picking teams may drop an item. Whenever we come across damaged stock we will report back to you for instruction, our preference is to dispose of the item as soon as possible. Please note we do not allow staff to take damaged items home with them even if the owner offers this. Sometimes lines do not sell or for some reason are not part of the online offering. When this happens we will contact you to resolve what we do in these cases. If a SKU has not been sold for 3 months it usually makes sense to remove it and make way for better.
Dry Ice Safety
Dry ice is solid carbon dioxide CO₂. It is very cold (-79 °C) and has the unusual property of changing from a solid to a gas without going through a liquid phase and this is why it is called ‘dry’ ice. It is very popular around the world for transporting frozen goods as they are not spoiled by liquid as would happen with water ice/gel packs etc.Frozen Delivered only use GREEN CO₂ from renewable energy and therefore our dry ice is not adding to the greenhouse effect.
In the quantities used in a barrier bag the main hazard is frostbite from prolonged contact with the skin. This is the reason we place the barrier bag at the bottom of the box with safety information displayed face- up. By the time the packaging is open the amount of dry will have fallen from 2kg to a few hundred grams. Leaving the barrier bag in the delivery box in a safe well ventilated space for a few hours will ensure that the dry ice evaporates to CO₂ gas, something all of us naturally breathe out.
We strongly recommend that you provide some information to your customers concerning dry ice, so that they know what to expect when their package arrives. We can help with suggested wording and guidance to share with your customers - please let us know what you need.
Fulfilment Rates
We offer a tiered pricing system depending on the number of orders you dispatch each month and how many SKU's you wish to store with us. Please do get in touch with us for more information on what we can do for you. Our services include the packaging, the dry ice ice, the pick and pack cost and the courier cost. A simple solution allowing you peace of mind to develop the Brand whilst we take care of your customer orders.
Storage
Frozen storage in a picking operation requires much more space than conventional frozen storage. We keep clients’ products on shelves which are incorporated into full height racks which fit within our freezers. In this way we can quickly access stock for picking, rotation with fresh stock and counting. We have a range of rates depending on storage needs ranging from a single shelf to whole walk-in freezers for multiple pallet loads. Please bear in mind that large numbers of SKUs will require more space. The shelf dimensions cannot be varied and so if your food box is not a perfect fit this will also lead to a need for more space. Over time clients may change the size of their boxes and this can change the space requirements. The space a client needs fluctuates as the stock is diminished through sales and then replaced with fresh stock. We have to allocate storage space based on maximum need to ensure we always have adequate room. If more stock is delivered than the agreed rental space we will need to charge for the minimum additional storage space required.
The best way to proceed is to arrange to send in samples of your packaging and number of SKUs. We can then provide a firm quote for storage so you know what you’re getting into!
Extras
We are occasionally asked to help clients with custom re-packaging, extra stock counts, additional marketing materials etc. Specialised expert labour is available for an agreed hourly rate or we can agree a ‘per task’ price.
Stock Monitoring
With all e-commerce platforms stock control is a standard feature so hopefully there will be little need for regular stock control. We can provide this service on request for a nominal fee. The IT Platform should demonstrate our "live" status at all times.
GDPR
To carry out our service we need access to your customer’s details and we need to share these with the courier company. Please contact us if you would like a copy of our GDPR policy.
Billing & Invoicing
Frozen Delivered will invoice at the end of each week the dispatches made. Our payment terms are 30 days from date of invoice.
