It seems the chicken s**t really hit the fan in the UK last week. Yep, it’s the stuff of nightmares for devoted fast-food fans all over the world; the well-known fried chicken retailer, KFC, actually ran out of chicken and shut up shop (well, most of them; 646 of their 900 stores to be precise). And people were not happy about it – at all. Take a look here:
So, what went wrong to make the impossible, possible? It all started when KFC agreed to hand over its chicken delivery contract to the global courier, DHL, in November last year. DHL claimed to have run into a few “operational issues” since taking on the new gig a few weeks ago which lead to “several” deliveries being incomplete or delayed – but we all know there was a bit of PR polish on that, right?
A few “operational issues”
Cutting through the fluff, it turns out DHL’s depot was in complete melt-down. In fact, it was in such chaos and disorganisation, delivery trucks were left queuing for hours to get in to pick up their deliveries. And the backlog was only getting bigger by the hour. One delivery driver even said he was left waiting at the depot for seven hours because of lack of training. And there were other blame-worthy problems too, such as general inexperience running a multi-temperature depot and major staff shortages.
The huge cost of delivery chaos
Unsurprisingly, the closure of KFCs restaurants came at huge cost. Not just because of lost profits, but because of the damage to its brand too – all at the hands of their third-party delivery company (red faces all around at DHL). One source suggests the franchise was losing money at a rate of $7.5 million per week!
Large logistics services in chaos aren’t too dissimilar to a train network in meltdown – a sneeze in one department causes the rest of the operation to catch a deathly cold. Like train services, when delivery systems are all out of whack and drivers are out of position, the bottleneck of delivery trucks around their central depot becomes almost impossible to clear.
Keep things moving and retain control
Of course, we understand delivering raw chicken is a slightly different game compared to the usual online retail products, but there are a couple of lessons any retailer can learn from KFC’s big delivery debacle.
First, it’s all about keeping things moving, which means getting those new deliveries out straight away, fast, and with no intervening processes. Second, it highlights the value of deliveries being managed by people who have experience in your products and a vested interest in your bottom line.
These simple philosophies are at the heart of everything we do here at Go People. Our aim is to provide all the tools retailers need to manage their own logistics processes in-house with the benefits of flexibility, transparency, speed, and choice.
By using Go People’s decentralised delivery solution it’s entirely possible to get same-day deliveries out on-demand – whether it’s one, a hundred, or more! And there’s no intermediary depot to screw things up, we take everything direct to the recipient.
While we have a network of thousands of Go People delivery runners, retailers can even choose to use Go People’s software to manage their own team of delivery drivers. Whatever choice they make, our fully-integrated systems allow all retailers to benefit from things like our user-friendly interface to upload and manage orders, transparent tracking capabilities, route-mapping, and instant proof of delivery – right through the day, evening, weekend.
You can find out more about how you can tailor Go People’s delivery solutions to your needs here.