Food delivery service replaces $150K of radios with one efficient app

With a fleet of 160 purpose-designed and in-house built vans operating from five state of the art distribution facilities, Tasty Fresh Food Co. provides fast and fresh food options to-go for the working people of metro Australia. From Queensland and Western Australia to New South Wales and Victoria, Tasty Fresh prides itself on extremely fast service, with the ability to serve 20 people in 2 minutes. The Tasty Fresh mobile food trucks allow customers to enjoy their lunch hour instead of waiting in a queue, while businesses appreciate the opportunity for their staff to stay on-site and still get a healthy, fresh meal. “Workers are fed, they’re happy and they’ve got time to have a break without wasting time hunting for food,” said Tasty Fresh Foods Doug Newnham.

Each Tasty Fresh van is operated by a single sales manager who is responsible for every detail such as driving to a location, firing up the gas oven, fulfilling food and drink orders, and checking out customers on a point of sale tablet. Prior to deploying Zello in all of their vans, Tasty Fresh used a legacy radio system that was not suited to their daily operations. Managers have to leave the van up to 60 times a day, and if they failed to hear a message, it was completely lost.

Newnham went looking for a PTT solution that could keep pace with their rapid expansion throughout Australia. “Our employees were using FB messenger and so on because the radios couldn’t cover our mountainous ranges.”

“Zello allows us to contact our van sales managers on the run and respond to our customers within minutes where previously it would have been not at all. Now they can check their message and reply at a time that is safe and convenient for them. Day to day we use Zello to communicate areas of traffic delay to our peers, discuss technical issues, product changes or problems and to ask for assistance from the wider group,” said Newnham. Zello’s message playback features and controls enable asynchronous working, so team members can catch up when their hands are free.

With the adoption of Zello, onboarding was just as fast as their speedy service. Newnham said, “it’s so easy to onboard, teach people how to use, and adaptable on the fly. We can change groups, channels, and access to people so quickly makes it a dream to use.”

“Once we set it up, we got them all on board. And then it just became that we made the decision to rip the radios out which was a really big decision. All of the vans – they were like $2000 to $2500 per van for 70 vans that we threw away - that’s how much convenience we realized we were getting from Zello that we actually threw away $150K worth of radios,” said Newnham.

Tasty Fresh Foods attributes Zello with helping transform their business. “It’s brought disparate teams together; people on literally the other side of the country, and it brings them together to problem solve.”

Zello’s ease of operation and reliable coverage enabled Tasty Fresh Foods to expand, while ensuring they can deliver their fresh food options in a quick and efficient way.