New York City residents, take note. Fresh Direct is ditching their boxes. Fresh Direct's delivered-to-your-door grocery service has grown enormously in the last seven years of serving the New York metropolitan area, and it now sends out over 2 million orders a year. But many of those orders have drawn complaints from customers about the seemingly ridiculous amount of cardboard involved. You can see Sara Kate's very first order here: one giant box, one tiny package of tea inside!
Well, Fresh Direct is quietly changing things in their shipping process, and eventually, they will deliver with no boxes at all.
The New York Times said yesterday that Fresh Direct has definitely heard the customer complaints about strange packaging inefficiencies, like one big box for one tiny block of cheese. These seeming inefficiencies are due to the way that their supply chain and packaging system works, and they are developing new tools to make the system even more efficient.
In fact, next year the boxes will be gone entirely, replaced by reusable plastic boxes and paper bags.
• Read more: Delivering More Groceries, and Fewer Boxes at The New York Times' City Room blog
More Fresh Direct:
• On Finally Trying Fresh Direct
• New Delivery Deal from Fresh Direct
• Fresh Direct's New One-Click Recipe Tool
(Image: Fresh Direct)
While I understand that FD had some issues with how the goods were boxed, I like the fact that I can recycle the boxes or use them as a free source of boxes when necessary.
Hopefully their new system, whatever it is, is less poluting...
view Kaisertizer's profile
I just got an order delivered this weekend and was amazed to see it all arrive in one box (plus a bag with a couple frozen items). So much better. Thanks FD!
view jkpenny's profile
oh thank goodness! I couldn't stand getting a delivery of a huge box with one or two things in it. I love Fresh Direct, their website is great, and their meats are really good. Produce I still buy at the green market, but everything else pretty much comes from FD.
view littlecat's profile