How do you change food logistics provider without a gap in service?
By Muhamed Selmani, Founder
Change provider one route at a time, in parallel. Read your exit clause first: notice, minimum terms, what leaving costs. Then run one representative route with the incoming provider alongside your current one, on your own traffic, for long enough to include a bad week. Measure on-time-in-full, door time and exceptions against definitions both sides were given in the same words. Move the rest only once that route holds.
Where the risk in a switch actually sits
The fear is a gap: one morning where the outgoing provider has stopped and the incoming one has not started. It is the main reason bad delivery arrangements survive years after everyone stopped defending them, and it applies whether you are replacing a logistics partner or switching courier company.
It is manageable, because the risk concentrates in three places and none is the vehicle. The agreement you are leaving. The knowledge that exists only in the head of the person driving your round. And the first bad week of a service that has not had one yet.
Read the exit clause before you shop
The commonest mistake is to run a process, choose someone, and then find out what leaving costs.
What to find in your current agreement, first
- The notice period, the dates it can be served, and whether the agreement rolls over before you get the chance. Notice tied to a renewal date is different from notice you can give in any month.
- Whether a minimum term or committed volume is still running, and what leaving under it costs.
- Termination for cause: what failure lets you leave early, over what period, and what evidence you must have kept. It is the most valuable clause you have.
- What survives termination: charges, exclusivity, and the position on crates and pallets.
- What you own on the way out: your delivery records, including proof of delivery and temperature records, in what format and by when.
- Anything that stops you running a second provider alongside. Exclusivity clauses exist.
Notice, and running someone in parallel
Two of those decide everything: the notice you owe, and whether anything stops you running a second provider alongside. If you may run in parallel, you can prove a provider before committing to one. If you may not, the trial goes where the agreement does not reach — a new site, an added day, an overflow round. Less representative, and better than switching on a promise.
On the incoming side, get the notice terms in writing during the process rather than at signature, and be wary of a standard period published with no reference to volume: a contract for 6 drops a week and one for 60 are not the same commitment.
TUPE: name it, then take advice
One question arises on almost any change of provider, and neither operations team is qualified to answer it: whether the people doing the work now transfer to the incoming provider with it. That is TUPE — the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations — and a change of service provider is the kind of arrangement it exists for.
Whether it applies turns on facts specific to your arrangement: who does the work now, how it is organised, what is changing and what is not. Those facts are the whole answer, which is why no website can settle it, and why a provider who says confidently that it does not apply cannot know.
The operational job is narrow. Raise it in writing with both providers at the start, ask each whether they consider any staff assigned to your service, and put both answers to an employment adviser.
The parallel run: choosing the route to prove
A parallel run means the incoming provider runs one live route of yours, on your real traffic, while your current provider keeps the rest. Nothing switches, and a failure is contained to that route — a fortnight lost, not a season.
What the proving route has to be
- Representative, not easy. A provider who can run your simplest round has told you nothing about the one that goes wrong.
- Not the hardest either. That tests the provider and your own assumptions at once, and you will not know which failed.
- Containing the thing you are leaving over: if the problem is the last kitchen served late, pick a round with a long tail; if it is chilled food arriving warm, pick that load.
- Measurable with what you have. If the measurement takes a month to build, the trial has not started.
- Reversible within a day, confirmed out loud rather than assumed. That is what makes it low-risk.
How long, and what to measure
Long enough to include what breaks a route: a peak day, the delivery after a bank holiday, an unavailable driver, a late order change. Weeks, not days.
The honest test is not a duration but whether the round has had a bad week yet, because what you are buying is what it does when something fails. Write the pass mark down first.
The measures that decide it
- On-time-in-full, scored as one test, against a definition both providers were handed in the same words.
- The same measure on the routes your current provider still runs, over the same weeks. A trial without a control is an anecdote.
- Door time per site, and whether the round holds on a day it runs long.
- Exceptions and what followed: who called whom, how fast, and whether you heard it from the provider or the site.
- Cover: what happened the first time the assigned driver was unavailable. If it never came up, ask whether the named backup has run the round.
What would make you abandon it
A method needs a stopping rule as much as a pass mark, and both are written while everyone is calm.
Stop the run if
- A failure reaches you from the site rather than the provider, or the same failure gets two different explanations.
- Cover turns out not to exist. If the answer to an absent driver is that somebody will be found, nothing is proven.
- The evidence has to be chased. What is chased during a trial is unavailable during a dispute.
- The price moves. A rate quoted for the trial and revised for the contract is the rate you will pay.
- You are managing them. If the trial takes more attention than the incumbent's failures did, that is your answer.
Mobilising the rest, in the order that keeps the gap shut
Onboarding a new logistics partner looks like a start date from a distance. Up close, mobilisation is a list of things that have to be true on the morning.
Sequence by risk, not by size. The proved route goes first, then the routes that resemble it, then the awkward site — the shared lift, the 30-minute window — on a day you are staffed to watch it.
Then check the calendar before you fix the dates. A switch that lands in your peak fortnight tests the incoming provider and your busiest weeks at once, and you will not know which one failed. If the peak is close, either finish the moves well clear of it or park them until after, and contract the peak itself as its own dated piece of capacity.
The mobilisation list
- Route data in the form the incoming provider will use: addresses, the door, the person to ask for, the window, the days, the load, and volume by weekday.
- The access knowledge that lives in a driver's head: which gate, which buzzer, which site takes deliveries through the dining room.
- Contacts on both sides: who is called at 05:30, who at 09:00, and who decides.
- The receiving sites told before the first delivery. A goods-in team meeting an unfamiliar driver is a rejected load.
- Insurance checked rather than assumed, with the covers told apart: public liability answers for third-party injury and property damage, goods in transit for the value of the load. Ask which responds when the goods sit on a subcontracted vehicle.
- Carriage terms, what training the drivers on your round hold, and anything your customers require.
- A dated switch-over per route, in the order they were proven, and a stated fallback for the first fortnight.
The handover, and telling the incumbent
There is rarely goodwill in a handover and usually a contract, which is why the exit clause is worth reading at the start.
What to get from the outgoing provider, in writing
- Your delivery records for the period, including proof of delivery and temperature records, in a format you can open.
- The equipment reconciliation: out, in and the balance, agreed rather than asserted.
- The last day of service confirmed, per route.
- The open items: claims in progress, credits owed, disputes unresolved. They do not travel with the service, and they get forgotten.
What a good switch looks like
Tell the outgoing provider the timetable yourself. They will find out, and one who hears it from their driver has no reason to hand over well — in the fortnight you need them both.
Done this way a switch is dull. One route moves, runs for weeks, has a bad day, and the bad day is handled by someone who rings you first. The next three move because the first held, and nobody notices. It is slower than a start date and far faster than moving everything and moving it back.
Related
Continue reading
FAQ
Questions, answered.
How long should a parallel run last?
Can we trial a provider on one route without breaching our current contract?
Does TUPE apply when we change delivery provider?
What should we ask a new provider for before the first route moves?
Start