• With a made-to-measure service DPD is establishing a prominent presence on the growth market of online food retailing

• Express shipping and a delivery forecast precise to the last hour available to e-food consignees throughout Germany

• Food returns for a good cause: cooperation with the food bank organisation 'Bundesverband Deutsche Tafel e.V.

Aschaffenburg, 25 September 2017 – With its new "DPD Food" product international parcel and express service provider DPD is positioning itself as a premium shipping partner to online grocery retailers. As its first customer the food box provider HelloFresh has already been using DPD's tailor-made combination of express delivery and a precise one-hour delivery forecast for some time. In addition DPD delivers fresh food on behalf of the online retailers myTime and Gourmondo, and is now also making its industry solution available to other shippers in the e-food segment. As a further feature, in cooperation with the food bank organisation Bundesverband Deutsche Tafel e.V. DPD is offering customers the opportunity to donate to charity any food parcels which can't be delivered.

"With its new Food product DPD is ensuring that fresh foodstuffs reach the consignee fast, conveniently and reliably"

Andreas Reß, Director Sales and Customer Service at DPD Germany

"With its new Food product DPD is ensuring that fresh foodstuffs reach the consignee fast, conveniently and reliably", explains Andreas Reß, Director Sales and Customer Service at DPD Germany. “We're convinced that with DPD Food we will be able to establish ourselves on a market that's going to experience tremendous growth in the next few years. We are therefore deliberately not concentrating on the big cities but are aiming at supplying consignees in all areas of Germany."

Because of DPD's guaranteed fast express delivery of its Food parcels, passive cooling is sufficient even for fresh foodstuffs. Cool pads, for example, will keep perishable goods fresh for several days. Depending on the category of groceries, with its Food service DPD offers guaranteed express delivery the next working day, or on request guaranteed delivery by 12:00 hrs the next working day. With DPD's Predict service consignees are notified by SMS and/or email one day in advance that a parcel is on its way to them. Depending on the Express product which has been selected, the message reads for example: "Your shipment will be delivered by 12:00 hrs on Saturday." The delivery forecast is then made more precise on the morning of the delivery, with a message to the consignee stating the precise one-hour delivery window, e.g.: "Your DPD parcel will be arriving between 10:29 and 11:29 hrs", with the forecast even running down to 30 minutes in the course of the delivery.

Consignees who know they won't be at home can provide a deposit okay via the DPD App or the online platform paketnavigator.de. The shipment is then left in a secure place specified by the consignee (for example in the garage or the garden shed). Such a deposit okay can be provided for an individual shipment or for all deliveries, and shippers can if necessary make this option available at the checkout. As a further delivery option consignees can also have their Food parcels left with a neighbour of their choice.

 

Food returns for a good cause: grocery parcels for food banks

In spite of DPD's proactive notifications and flexible delivery options, it can always happen that an individual Food parcel fails to reach the consignee within the specified period of time - for example if the consignee is called away from home at short notice. DPD offers shippers a special return option for such cases: wherever possible any foodstuff shipments which can't be delivered are donated to a local food bank. "In the case of perishable goods, returning them to the consignor generally doesn't make sense", explains Andreas Reß, adding: "We therefore cooperate with food banks to make sure that foodstuffs can be put to good use locally."

Bundesverband Deutsche Tafel e.V. is the central organisation covering more than 930 local food banks with over 2,000 distribution points. These food banks collect good quality foodstuffs which are no longer suitable for sale, and distribute them to people in need either free of charge or against a nominal payment.

 

E-food: a growth market

According to consumer research organisation GfK ¹, at 48.5% food shopping accounts for almost half of all consumer spending. Although in Germany at the moment only 1% of this spending is generated online, the turnover from online food retailing is expected to rise from €1.1 billion in the year 2014 to more than €7 billion a year by 2025. Over the same period the share of "foodstuffs and drugstore articles" in overall online retailing is expected to double from 8% to 16%. According to a comprehensive study published by Ernst & Young ² in May 2017, at present 16% of German consumers purchase groceries online. And significantly, 1.4% of all consumers do most of their grocery shopping online. For the year 2016 DPDgroup’s E-Shopper Barometer ³ indicated that on average consumers throughout Europe spent significantly more than €50 per shipment of e-food. From January to October 2016 approx. 14% of all European online shoppers had purchased a shipment of fresh foodstuffs on the Internet at least once. According to the E-Shopper Barometer the e-food market is at its most developed in the UK: 21% of British online shoppers order fresh foodstuffs or drinks on the Internet at least once a month, while the online share of overall food shopping is already as much as 12.1%.  

 

[1]Please see http://www.gfk-geomarketing.de/white_paper_ecommerce.html

[2] Please see http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Online-Shopping_von_Lebensmitteln_in_Deutschland/$FILE/ey-online-shopping-von-lebensmitteln-in-deutschland.pdf

[3] https://www.dpd.com/home/insights/e_shopper_barometer