How Gordon Food Service made same-day delivery a competitive advantage

By FarEye | Updated: April 17, 2025

Background

Gordon Food Service (GFS) is the largest family-operated broadline food distribution company in North America, employing 19,000 people with annual revenue of $12.9 billion. GFS delivers to restaurants, the healthcare industry, and schools across much of the United States and Canada.

The Last-Mile Challenge

GFS traditionally uses distribution centers to deliver weekly truckloads of food products to customers. GFS wanted to offer same-day orders and delivery to their customers if they ran short of certain food items using their stores as mini-fulfillment centers. Planning same-day van delivery routes manually was time-consuming and led to inefficient routing and missed delivery windows along with an inconsistent customer experience. Clients were unable to track and trace same-day delivery orders.

GFS wanted to create an omnichannel last-mile strategy to grow its market share and increase its speed and efficiency for drivers through last-mile optimization. GFS also wanted to track and trace orders and notify customers about deliveries in pre-chosen time slots.

At a Glance

8.6%
By adding digital last-mile capability GFS grew their sales by 8.6% in 2021

36%
Last-mile delivery from Gordon stores accounted for 36% of that growth

The FarEye Solution

With FarEye’s last-mile solution, GFS now offers customers individual items delivered the same day from their GFS stores. There is no need for businesses to take a trip to a local grocery store or wait for a weekly delivery to replenish items.

GFS was able to offer their customers more choices like a convenient three-hour delivery window time and the ability to be consistent and on-time in the chosen delivery time-frame.

“We have a huge competitive advantage over not just same-day delivery and brick and mortar, but what Gordon is able to deliver is even more towards a customer’s needs.”
AL CONTRERAS
Customer Innovation Manager

Lasting Results

• FarEye’s solution gives GFS the ability to have capacity planning with order management.
• Drivers are routed efficiently through a driver app using optimized routes in order to hit target delivery windows.
• Managers can see orders in real-time and where they are in the delivery process.
• Customers can receive real-time updates as to where their order is through a customer app that uses track and trace.

How FarEye Can Help You

Experience can help you proactively notify your customers of where their orders are and reduce anxiety and calls about the delivery.

Route can help slash delivery costs with real-time dynamic and constraints-based routing, enabling you to deliver on-time for all last-mile deliveries, including same day.

Execute provides driver tools for pickups and deliveries to enable your drivers dynamically execute same-day deliveries.