Overview
Raised Real is disrupting the baby and toddler food industry with an innovative direct-to-consumer model and nutrient-dense, plant-based kids meals. Every two weeks or once a month, customers receive a shipment of flash-frozen, ready-to-make meals.
Challenge
Raised Real needed a 3rd-party fulfillment partner with the competency and care to ensure its order delivery experience met its brand standards. For starters, all orders must arrive on time and frozen, since customers are relying on Raised Real to feed their kids. Beyond that, every box needs to be carefully picked and packed:
- Orders need to be shipped in a branded box with a recyclable insulated liner
- Multiple meal cards are inserted in every box. Cards must correspond to the products inside
- Orders must be carefully picked, as order quantities and products vary by customer
- Customer orders must arrive each Thursday, making on-time shipping critical
Before
Previously, Raised Real shipped from 3 locations around the US. This created several challenges:
Managing multiple 3PL partners: Each location was a separate 3PL company, requiring Raised Real to manage each partner individually. Steven Kontz, Raised Real CFO and Co-Founder: “Having to piece together a nationwide fulfillment network with different vendors was a massive headache. Inventory management and coordinating freight-in to each location was incredibly time consuming, and it was too easy for things to fall through the cracks.”
Food arriving thawed: With only 3 fulfillment locations, too many orders were arriving thawed due to long time in transit.
High costs: Raised Real’s costs were high, due to freighting product to 3 separate locations and shipping some orders 2-Day Air or Next-Day Air due to not reaching the entire US in 1-2 days ground.
After
Since switching their ecommerce fulfillment to Cygnus Frozen 3PL, Raised Real has seen significant improvement, both in delighting customers and reducing internal headaches and costs:
Nationwide 1-2 day ground coverage: Raised Real can now reach all of its customers in 1-2 days ground.
Reduction in issues: Steven said, “In addition to an uptick in quality (fewer errors in both getting the correct products and inserts to our customers), the expanded footprint of 8 fulfillment centers has massively reduced the rate of packages arriving to customers thawed.”
Simplicity of 1 national partner: Instead of 3 separate 3PL partners, Raised Real now has 1: Cygnus. A dedicated account manager at Cygnus provides weekly status updates, inventory reports and ensures all orders are shipped on time. Additionally, Raised Real’s freight costs are significantly reduced, due to only needing to ship pallets to Cygnus’ 1 DC in Minnesota, from which Cygnus distributes product to its 8 fulfillment centers. Steven said, “We were close to a breaking point managing 3 different 3PL centers for national distribution, and never would have been able to expand to 8 centers without also expanding our staff to manage the different centers. Cygnus handles all of that for us.”
But Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
“You won’t find a more complete distribution network, or a better partner than Cygnus. They simplify the operational nightmare of managing multiple 3PL partners, and they provide quality service and care that is unmatched.”
– Steven Kontz, CFO Raised Real