by Whether it’s quality meat directly off the farm or freshly picked produce, customers love buying fresh food from small, local businesses. Online sales are a fantastic way to reach more customers — but shipping perishable goods safely and quickly can be a challenge.
Food safety is also top of mind for many customers right now due to some recent high-profile (and deadly) failures at Boar’s Head and other companies. Now is the time to confidently address your customer’s food safety concerns.
Need a refresher on how to ship perishable goods? We’ve got you covered.
Knowing best practices for shipping meat and other fresh food items is a good start, but it’s equally important to know what you shouldn’t do. In this article, we’ll cover the biggest challenges of selling fresh food online and the top five mistakes to avoid.
The Challenges of Shipping Perishable Items
Before you start selling fresh food online, it’s important to have an understanding of the major challenges.
- Strict Regulations: Food safety regulations are strict for a reason. The consequences of not properly storing and shipping perishable goods can be catastrophic. While huge brands might have the resources to recover from a major incident, a single food safety slip up is devastating for a small business.
- Inventory Management Challenges: When shipping perishable goods online, you need to track your existing stock levels, know when food in storage will spoil, and more — this makes managing inventory more challenging than for non-perishable retail goods.
- Temperature Swings During Shipment: As soon as an item is packed and put on a truck, the ambient temperature in transit fluctuates greatly. This increases the risk of spoilage if items aren’t packed properly or damaged.
- Cross-Contamination Risks: If you ship a customer different types of meat or meat together with produce, improper packing can lead to cross-contamination.
- Increased Costs: Shipping perishable goods correctly comes with added costs in the form of managing shipping partners, buying food-safe packaging, and tracking inventory. Finding ways to streamline processes and keep costs down is essential.
When it comes to shipping perishable goods, It’s better to proactively address challenges early than fix problems later on.
Related Watch: Check out our Perishable Shipping Webinar
5 Perishable Food Shipping Mistakes To Avoid
Ready to sell perishable goods online? We love to see it — but make sure to avoid these five mistakes.
1. Using the Wrong Packaging
Controlling the temperature of fresh food is essential. It all starts with the right packaging.
That said, using the same packing processes and materials for all types of perishable goods is not ideal and can even lead to spoilage. Make sure you understand the right way to package different types of fresh food. Consider the following factors:
- Temperature + Type of Item: Know what items you’ll need to keep frozen versus cool and what materials to use. Also, the type of packing materials you use will vary if you’re shipping produce or meat. If items have drastically different temperature requirements, you may need to prepare separate shipments.
- Distance: Know how far your food shipment is traveling and when it will expire, and use the right packaging accordingly. A local, same-day delivery will have different needs to something traveling cross country.
- Avoid cross-contamination: Make sure to keep different types of meat, produce, or any other items separate and sealed. Pack items strategically to avoid cross-contamination.
Establish consistent packing processes for the different types of food you sell. You can simplify this by using your e-commerce solution to generate packing lists based on what types of items are in the order.
2. Not Using the Right Shipping Partner
Shipping fresh food depends on reliability and speed. Unlike a general retailer, a delay isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s potentially a total loss.
Use a reliable cold shipping partner and avoid offering free shipments unless it’s for bulk orders. You can also use your e-commerce solution to define delivery zones by zip code. This ensures that customers are set up with the right shipment method automatically.
Make sure you filter out customers that are too far away. Modern e-commerce platforms will ask customers to enter their zip code as they enter your site. That way, customers in unsupported areas won’t go all the way through the checkout process only to figure out you can’t ship to them.
3. Manually Tracking Inventory
Managing inventory is a challenge for all retailers, but managing perishable inventory is even harder. For fresh food suppliers, knowing the status of all of your inventory and timing shipments ensures optimal freshness.
Doing this by hand is a recipe for disaster. Instead, use perishable inventory management software to reduce spoilage and streamline your processes. Inventory management solutions help fresh food shippers by:
- Providing a real-time view of all inventory
- Connecting directly to your website to ensure accurate stock levels
- Tracking high-risk items with batch and expiry date tracking
- Providing insights into bestsellers and inventory churn with custom reports
- Using sell by weight functions to track the total weight sold and what’s still inventory for catch weight items
Ditching spreadsheets and other manual inventory tracking will help you reduce errors, cut down on shrinkage, and streamline your processes.
4. Undercommunicating With Customers
Customers expect a high level of transparency for businesses selling fresh food. Build trust by providing customers with accurate information and communicating often.
If you sell variable weight items, use catch weight software to provide customers with the exact weights and prices of their orders.
Also, use your e-commerce platform to communicate order status with customers so they know exactly when:
- Their order was placed
- The shipment was packed
- Their Payment was processed (along with differences between the estimate and final cost)
- It’s out for delivery
- It’s delivered
The more information you can provide customers the better. Extend that mindset for when things go wrong. The occasional problem is inevitable, but if you’re proactive about addressing it, you’re much more likely to win those customers over.
5. Not Optimizing Pricing and Processes
Fresh food shipping can get complicated, especially as your business grows. However, speed is essential both for food safety and to keep your costs down.
That’s why it’s important to optimize your processes and pricing. Measure how long it takes to prepare orders along with the cost of packaging and shipping. Then, use the reports on your e-commerce system to understand your profit margins and consider baking in some of the costs of shipping into your product costs.
Also, leverage technology and train your staff to streamline your shipping processes. Reducing the time spent on each shipment will help you scale your processes and save money in the long run. See if any items take longer than others to prepare and see if there are opportunities to streamline the process.
Last, make sure you are methodical about your packing processes to avoid losing track of items. For food that requires refrigeration, even one hour outside of refrigeration or temperature-controlled packaging can lead to spoilage.
Simplify How You Ship Perishable Goods With a Trusted E-Commerce Partner
Understanding how to ship perishable goods effectively and safely is key to growing your business and building trust with customers. By avoiding the mistakes above, you can set yourself up for success.
Your first step: collaborate with a technology partner that understands your unique challenges. GrazeCart is an e-commerce solution specifically designed to simplify how farmers, grocers, and meat markets sell perishable goods.
Our platform includes everything you need to ship perishable goods quickly and safely, including:
- Sell by weight functions
- A drag and drop website builder
- Real-time inventory tracking
- Shipping and delivery partnerships
- Subscription support
… and more.
Start your free 14-day trial today to see how GrazeCart can streamline your processes, boost your sales, and increase customer satisfaction.