Fresh Food Distributor Thrives With OptimoRoute, Increasing Delivery Capacity by 20%

T’SAS is a fresh produce delivery business based in Brussels, Belgium. Every day it delivers to food service customers across the entire country, including restaurants, hotels, catering companies and hospitals. 

Since 2015 T’SAS has been using OptimoRoute to plan routes for its fleet which – currently made up of 12 trucks. CEO Stephan T’Sas explains that OptimoRoute was the clear winner when he tested route optimization solutions to replace inefficient manual planning. He was – and is still – impressed by OptimoRoute’s competitive pricing, committed customer service and overall usability. There are improvements across all areas of business:   

Planning Takes Half the Time and on the Go Changes Are a Breeze  

T’SAS relies on speedy OptimoRoute planning that smoothly integrates into the tight order preparation process: orders are received until midnight and the first trucks need to leave the depot at 3 am. Manual planning used to take 1 hour – but with OptimoRoute planning takes no longer than 30 minutes. With 50% quicker planning, T’SAS gains precious time to focus on preparing trucks and ensuring that they leave on time every day.  

Whatsmore, OptimoRoute lets Stephan easily adapt routes during the day when needed: 

“Planning is fast and straightforward. And now the routes are on a screen, with pins, it is visual when you need to make last-minute changes – versus when you have names on a piece of paper, it isn’t easy to see a solution right away.”

Revenue Booster in a Low-Margin Operation: Delivery Capacity up by 20%

Manual planning meant that daily orders were poorly distributed among the delivery trucks: 

“Every day we ran into volume constraints – some trucks could not take any more loads, while others were half empty. Now, OptimoRoute balances loads across the whole fleet.”

The improved volume distribution, along with more efficient routes, had an immediate effect: T’SAS could increase delivery capacity by 20% with the same number of trucks:

“Straight away we could fit the same amount of orders into 10 trucks instead of 12 trucks. But, we did not cut the number of drivers, we just increased the number of deliveries we could complete by 20%.”

As Stephan explains, each delivery averages above €150 ($175), but margins are low. The capacity increase that OptimoRoute makes possible is the perfect opportunity to grow revenue with the same number of vehicles.

Sticking to Delivery Time Windows Increases Customer Satisfaction

Time is of the essence for busy food service customers – especially when dealing with fresh food. T’SAS customers have preferred delivery times for their orders. Some of these preferred times are even contractually defined and come with financial penalties. OptimoRoute helped T’SAS reduce customer complaints regarding time windows by 75%. 

The huge improvement in arrival accuracy was possible for two main reasons. First, OptimoRoute produces efficient routes that account for numerous constraints such as delivery time windows (as well as other constraints like vehicle capacity, or driver skills.) And, T’SAS deliveries stay on schedule because OptimoRoute allows planners to always match drivers to the same customers:

“There’s a lot of knowledge that the driver needs – such as directions for where to go for each delivery. When we match drivers to the same customers, drivers don’t waste time looking for where to park, where to leave crates…OptimoRoute keeps us on time.”