FreshDirect is a New York based online grocery delivery company, founded in 2002 and headquartered in the Bronx. It was one of the first companies in the U.S. to deliver perishable foods without operating physical stores, sourcing directly from farms, fisheries, and producers to deliver fresh groceries and chef-prepared meals across the New York metropolitan area. A key differentiator is that customers can choose two-hour delivery windows and FreshDirect guarantees delivery within that time slot
Fresh Direct
Grocery Delivery
Needs
Route Optimization
Industry
Logistics
Client
Timeline
Oct 2024 - Sep 2025
ABOUT FRESH DIRECT
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Traditional time-slot delivery systems use fixed capacity limits. For example, allowing 10 deliveries in a two-hour window. This doesn’t account for geography. If deliveries are close together, the driver finishes early (overcapacity). If deliveries are far apart, the driver may not have enough time to complete them all within the promised window.
SOLUTION
To solve this, FreshDirect partnered with Afi Labs to build the Route Optimization and Delivery Execution (ROADE) platform. ROADE manages time-slot capacity using a route-centric approach. When a new order is confirmed, the Google Route Optimization API is used to insert it into the day’s route in the most efficient way.
ROADE then calculates the available “slack” time - idle time not spent driving or delivering - within each two-hour window. If slack time is positive, the time slot remains open, indicating the driver can still handle additional deliveries.
This hybrid approach - combining a commercial route optimization API with FreshDirect’s own business logic - gave them the best of both worlds: access to Google’s routing intelligence and real time traffic data, plus the flexibility for their team to customize decision rules.
WHAT’S NEXT
The next stage of the FreshDirect and Afi Labs partnership focuses on using data from ROADE to make smarter planning decisions. By analyzing past deliveries and incorporating forecasts - such as predicted weather from the Google Weather API and traffic conditions - Fresh Direct can better anticipate how many trucks and drivers are needed in different areas at specific times of day.
Furthermore, data collected by ROADE can be used to learn how delivery durations vary based on context. For instance, delivering to a high-rise takes significantly longer than to a single-family home. Over time, these insights will help FreshDirect optimize resource allocation and improve the accuracy of delivery time estimates.
ADDRESS
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