Supreme Senior Meals Went From No Deliveries to 1000 Meals a Week

Started a meal delivery service from scratch in 48 hours

15-20 drivers deliver 1000 meals 3 days a week

100 deliveries in 4 hours using OptimoRoute

The global pandemic of 2020 has hit hard across many industries worldwide. Arguably, one of the hardest-hit industries is the food and beverage industry. According to the US National Restaurant Association, more than 110,000 restaurants — or about 17% of the total restaurants in the country — have closed permanently or long-term during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In March of last year, Supreme Foods WorldWide, the parent company which owns and operates brands like Supreme Burger and Supreme Fish Delight across the US, was staring down that same barrel. 

We spoke to Adeidra Washington, their Operations Manager who explained how they were able to pivot their in-restaurant business to delivering meals to senior citizens in the greater Atlanta area through Supreme Senior Meals.  

With OptimoRoute, Setting up the New Delivery Service Was a Breeze 

“It was a Friday. We were in the process of closing down our restaurants just after Covid hit. The county had awarded us a subsidized job of delivering meals to senior citizens but we only had 48 hours to organize drivers, vehicles, meals and have it all be ready for delivery by Monday.” 

Thankfully, a lot of their restaurant staff were willing to be retasked to do deliveries while others remained to work the kitchen side of the business. They were able to quickly acquire vehicles to do deliveries so all that was left was to find a software to streamline deliveries as efficiently as possible. They found OptimoRoute: 

“We hired 15-20 new drivers, most of them already Uber drivers or GrubHub drivers who had to adapt their businesses once the pandemic hit. We onboarded between 15-20 drivers to deliver 100 meals a day. Today, thanks to OptimoRoute, Supreme Senior Meals delivers 1,000 meals a week.”

Washington adds that organizing these deliveries without a route optimization software would have been a nightmare:

“It would take me at least 6 to 8 hours to route all my drivers. I don’t even want to consider what a mess that would be. The software works great and the delivery process is really simple because of it.” 

Using Vehicle Constraints and Time Windows for Maximum Efficiency 

Supreme Senior Meals gets their delivery addresses from the county on Monday. They get uploaded to OptimoRoute at which point Washington makes schedules and sends them out to drivers to do deliveries on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

Supreme Senior Meals, in particular, needed a software that could account for vehicle capacity constraints and strict delivery windows because they deliver frozen meals: 

“We have a four-hour time window to deliver meals because the meals are frozen and they would thaw. We didn’t want to use something as antiquated as Mapquest. We needed to be as efficient as possible in an incredibly short time span.” 

Additionally, the feedback from drivers showed that the mobile app is a major requirement since it states the exact number of boxes or meals per delivery: 

“Drivers can see exactly how many boxes or meals they should deliver to each location which proved to be a very useful and time-saving feature which increased delivery efficiency and time saved on each delivery.” 

Considering Supreme Senior Meals is partially government-funded, delivery confirmation and accountability was also a key factor. Washington states that OptimoRoute provided the ideal solution for driver tracking and weekly reporting: 

“We chose OptimoRoute because it offers us a Planned vs. Actual feature and the ability to track our drivers through Breadcrumbs. Because the account is government-funded we need to submit detailed reports on deliveries made in a timely manner. In fact, the county reps actually preferred that we send the OptimoRoute report as opposed to our own, they were that pleased with the details.”