[00:49] Introduce you and your company.

I’m Dan Gilland, and I lead business development for Schwan’s Home Service. We are based in Minnesota.
I was practically born and raised on Schwan’s, so it’s fitting that I’m working here.
Schwan’s has sold high quality, delicious frozen food direct-to-consumer since 1952.
We deliver just about everywhere in the lower forty-eight states using our depots and trucks. The actual home deliveries are managed by our partner, UPS.

[05:21] Tell us about Schwan’s model.

Our typical model is delivering our frozen food direct to customers with our own private fleet of delivery trucks.
We call our 3PL side Cygnus Frozen 3PL by Schwan’s Home Service. We wanted to establish that it is part of Schwan’s but differentiate it from our direct-to-consumer business.

[07:37] What is frozen eCommerce fulfillment?

Shipping online orders of frozen food direct to consumers’ homes.
Most frozen food brands either don’t have the infrastructure or desire to fulfill their own orders.
A lot of frozen foods being sold online today include meats, ice cream, smoothies, and frozen meals.
eCommerce gives you the space to market your brand and tell your story accordingly.

[12:01] What are the problems that companies who are trying to deliver frozen foods to consumers’ homes run into?

Of all the product categories sold online, the degree of difficulty is probably the highest for shipping frozen food.
Your mistakes are really clear and really frustrating to the customer.
Food showing up in poor condition can damage the brand even though it may be the 3PL’s fault.

[16:21] What’s the second big problem you see out there?

Dealing with a 3PL that doesn’t specialize in frozen food and/or doesn’t specialize in direct-to-consumer or ecommerce.
Frozen food needs to stay frozen throughout the whole process, so the 3PL must have experience in doing this.

[19:22] What’s another problem you see in the marketplace?

Slow shipping. Consumers expect one- to two-day shipping but getting that speed everywhere in the US can be a challenge.

[20:51] Tell me a little bit about how Cygnus goes about frozen ecommerce fulfillment.

The first thing that you must solve is getting within two-day shipping of all your customers.
Another thing to do to reduce melting is to have a really clear packing process.

[22:58] Explain the whole process from the time a company makes a frozen food item to when it gets to the consumer.

You ship your inventory on pallets to our national distribution center in Minnesota.
From there, Schwan’s would distribute your inventory to our ten fulfillment centers.
Each of our ten centers get a replenishment every two weeks.
We’ll integrate with your online order management platform so that we can see orders as your customers place them.
UPS then comes by every afternoon and picks up all the orders shipping out that day.

[26:51] This is a good opportunity for someone who is getting into the frozen ecommerce business to have a fulfillment partner who’s been doing it for seventy years.

That’s why we thought that this segment makes too much sense for us not to engage in.
We have the fulfillment network and that intersects with the growth of online grocery.

[27:55] If someone wants to continue the conversation, how do they get ahold of you?

You can go to our website to see more about how our process works through case studies.
There’s a form that you can fill out to set up a free consultation.

Learn More:

Dan Gilland LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-gilland-3835aa58/

Cygnus Frozen 3PL: https://cygnus3pl.com/

On the UBI Paper