One small step for your organic order, one giant step for Goodery
July was a BIG month for Goodery as we took a huge leap forward in our journey with a new fulfilment centre. Exciting times – we wanted to share how it all came about.
We did it!
On the 20th July 2020, Goodery started up in a commercial unit in north Norwich. This followed a six-week sprint to find a suitable location, and then procure and assemble the essentials for our new fulfilment centre. It began with us striking lucky in meeting Jerry Fuller from Dencora, a commercial property company who like to see startups get going. So, we got a great deal in the leasehold and set to work getting the other things we needed in place.
Setting-up a fulfilment centre in record time is a bit like doing a jigsaw against the clock, where the pieces are not only unfamiliar but there is no exact picture to fit them to. Everything we did was visualised on a piece of paper, checked against the physical dimensions of the available space and estimated to give us a starting shot at the best layout to optimise the processes we would encounter once we started running.
Keeping your organic fruit and vegetables fresh
The first major piece to be designed was our cold room. This is a critical part of our infrastructure and it took a few iterations to get a layout. Again, we were very fortunate to work with Darren Page from Coldlink to resolve the design. Our cold room is now big enough to accommodate 4 pallets-full of produce as well as shelving for loose goods and have an overall footprint that allowed easy access from other parts of the operation. Those parts include a goods-in area, goods-out area, box storage, wholefoods storage, packing area, coffee area and office. Yes, we built an office in there too, in three days!
Getting the basics right – always focused on sustainability
There was also the need to rewire the electrical mains distribution board to accommodate our requirements which will include charging points for our soon to be delivered electric delivery vans. Yes, Goodery is living up to its aim to do zero emission ‘last mile’ deliveries to all our customers. We’d like to give a big thanks to all those that helped us get there including the great service offered to us by all the trades we employed, including DJ Electrical, AFR Plumbing and L&S Ceilings and Partitions.
We searched the country for the things we needed and made a roadtrip to collect them from places like Kings Lynn and Coventry just to save time. In all, there were about 100 pieces of the jigsaw that had to fit together as seamlessly as possible to achieve our targets.
Let’s grow together
In other words, we are working to become as efficient as possible in order to deliver the freshest organic food in the most affordable way to our customers. We hope you are as excited as we are about doing all this in an ecologically positive way and we look forward to a collaboration that also builds a resilient local economy.