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Customer Story:
Eden Caterers
Challenge
Eden Caterers was manually planning deliveries throughout central London, resulting in wasted time, wasted fuel, and high delivery costs.
The complexity of London addresses - where building entrances are often unclear - meant drivers could spend up to 30 extra minutes locating a single drop.
Order cancellations had a knock-on effect on the entire planned route, and kitchen preparation schedules were tied directly to delivery times, adding further pressure.
Approach
Access MaxOptra was implemented alongside what3words to solve the address precision problem in central London.
Route planning was automated, and what3words three-word location codes were used to pinpoint exact delivery locations - eliminating the time drivers spent searching for entrances and loading bays.
Results
- Delivery planning time was reduced by 95%.
- Drivers could locate exact drop points with confidence, cutting wasted time on the road.
- The business was able to accept more orders, improve kitchen scheduling, and deliver to major London brands with greater reliability and efficiency.
About Eden Caterers
Eden Caterers are regarded as one of the UK’s most sustainable caterers, and boast over 5,000 customers, including some of the biggest fashion houses and brands, alongside famous venues and conference centres.
They pride themselves on providing fresh, seasonal and delicious food around central London since 1993; putting them in a great position to know their customers’ needs and wants.
Their kitchens near Waterloo Station are the perfect base, close to all their customers, for creating stunning food for all occasions. Be it a breakfast meeting for 3, sandwich lunch for 30, or a canape reception for 300, they have a range of menus to match the occasion.
In terms of their delivery operation, Eden owns a fleet of 13 vehicles which deliver around 150 drops a day, all day, from 8am through to 11pm.
The challenge
Eden had initially been using a manual, paper-based delivery operation. Manually identifying how much can fit into each van for each job, with planning taking 5-6 hours per day, and taking up an entire job role. Planning also required an element of guesswork when it came to time allocated or traffic considerations, leaving room for human error.
Due to the manual nature of this planning, Eden were facing challenges with both wasted time and wasted fuel, which was resulting in high costs for their delivery operations. Additionally, this restricted the size of orders they were able to accept. And, if a customer cancelled an order, it would have a significant impact on the planned route.
To ensure Eden’s food is delivered as fresh as possible, preparation schedules were influenced by delivery times. This added an additional level of stress and complication to both the delivery and kitchen planning.
Another challenge that Eden faced was ensuring the right drivers for the right jobs. Due to delivering throughout central London, often the specific location of the buildings or offices were not clear, leading to additional time spent hunting for the correct address, which could add half an hour to a drop. Because of this, Eden were often reliant on using the same drivers for the same jobs, restricting their flexibility and posing challenges for new drivers.
The results
After extensive research and considering other routing suppliers, Eden found that Access MaxOptra stood out from the competition.
Eden was set up with the system quickly, having positive experiences with both the Access MaxOptra sales and implementation teams.
And the results speak for themselves.
Previously, planning was taking up to 6 hours a day, whereas with Access MaxOptra this only takes 15 minutes. That’s a time saving of 95%! Plus, because of the ease of using the Access MaxOptra system, the planning can be carried out by almost anyone in the business, removing any single-person dependencies.
Any last minute orders are easily allocated into the plan using Access MaxOptra’s drag and drop functionality. And due to the automated planning, Eden can now accept larger orders without any additional stress.
Access MaxOptra has also directly contributed to the high-quality of Eden’s produce. Eden can now be confident in the time that an order will be delivered, and how long certain food types can spend travelling in a vehicle. They can now use this information to plan the perfect time for food preparation, ensuring optimum freshness for their customers.
Eden have also successfully utilised Access MaxOptra’s what3words integration to help pinpoint the exact location of buildings within London. As well as reducing time that drivers spend on the drop, it also means that new drivers can be added to routes without the need for specific location knowledge.
And to make the delivery process even smoother, Access MaxOptra identifies which businesses have strict security protocols which require passes, and allocate the correct driver to the job to further reduce unnecessary time spent at the drop location.
The future for Eden Caterers
The future is looking delicious for Eden.
They have recently celebrated their best ever year, and are now looking to open up more branches both UK and internationally with the support of Access MaxOptra for their delivery operations.
In terms of Access MaxOptra usage, Eden plans to make the most of the innovative customer communication functionality to offer specific times chosen by the customer. They are excited to be able to offer this service and be confident that the customer, and the business, can relax knowing they will deliver on time.
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