DPD Germany expanding food delivery service

DPD Germany has announced it is making its fresh food delivery service available to more online grocery retailers. As previously reported by Post&Parcel, food box provider HelloFresh has already been using DPD Food for some time, and DPD also delivers on behalf of the online retailers myTime and Gourmondo.

“With its new Food product DPD is ensuring that fresh foodstuffs reach the consignee fast, conveniently and reliably,” said Andreas Reß, Director Sales and Customer Service at DPD Germany, in a statement issued this week.  “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.”

DPD offers guaranteed express delivery on 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.

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. Consignees can also opt to have their food parcels left with a neighbour of their choice.

DPD has also come up with an interesting programme that supports food banks. The company explained: “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.”