Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and its suppliers have streamlined their distribution models to reduce direct store deliveries, which saves money on fuel, allowing the company to pass these savings on to customers. This innovative, yet simple, distribution model also helps the environment by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions, fuel consumption, as well as neighborhood traffic congestion and noise that multiple deliveries create.
A traditional grocery store receives many deliveries a day, including fresh and frozen food, produce, and direct store deliveries from numerous suppliers. To eliminate extra and unnecessary delivery trips, Fresh & Easy has created a new way of stocking stores with these same products with fewer deliveries by asking the company’s suppliers to deliver directly to the company’s centralized distribution center.
To further conserve fuel, Fresh & Easy has employed state-of-the-art technology in its shipping fleet. Fresh & Easy trailers feature a hybrid refrigeration vector unit that minimizes the amount of diesel used to safely cool and transport store products. The trailers also include automatic refrigeration shut-off when optimum temperature is reached inside the cooling chamber as well as a complete engine shut-off once parked at the stores. Electrical stand-by technology also minimizes the impact on the environment by using no diesel fuel to run refrigeration units on the trailers while parked at the distribution center.
