Online fresh food grocer, FreshDirect, opened its new state-of-the-art facility in New York City’s South Bronx community on July 17th.
FreshDirect Campus (FDC), reimagines farm-to-fork food distribution and manufacturing, which will provide even higher-quality, fresher food for customers. It also enables the Company to add thousands of new products and accelerate its expansion into new geographies with its FreshDirect, FoodKick, and FreshDirect At The Office brands.
The 400,000-square-foot facility is equipped with robotic pick towers, smart routing technologies, and nine miles of conveyor belts.
“The launch of the FreshDirect Campus is the culmination of 16 years of learnings that have enabled us to reinvent the grocery industry with customer experience, food quality, and sustainability at its core,” said FreshDirect CEO and Co-Founder, Jason Ackerman.
The environmentally friendly and highly energy efficient facility enables the company to transition from cardboard delivery boxes to recyclable bags. There will also be less food waste through a combined approach of innovation and community outreach.
“This marks a pivotal moment for our business, while positioning us for future growth. We can also better serve the community by providing greater access to fresh food and significantly reducing food waste, cardboard use, and energy consumption. We are thrilled to officially be a part of the Bronx community and are very thankful for the local support we’ve received throughout this journey,” said Ackerman.
In the areas of product innovation and mobile convenience, the company will be rolled out in the coming months thousands of new products which include: 350+ new brands that are disrupting the food industry, 800+ new snacking items, and 500+ new organic products.
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Using the Bronx as its new base of operations will allow FreshDirect and FoodKick to build upon existing local vendor relationships and work with even more local suppliers and food incubators over time.
FreshDirect is equivalent to 50 grocery stores and has hired more than 1,500 employees from the Bronx since 2014. Due to its centralized location, provides a more efficient means to reallocate perishables to FreshDirect’s long-standing partners City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City in the fight against hunger.
“When we launched this business 16 years ago, we set out to source the very best fresh food for our customers and that maniacal focus on food quality is still at our core today. We’ve built a world-class fresh food facility that enables us to better execute our farm to fork mission,” said David McInerney, company’s Co-Founder and Chief Food Adventurer.
Information provided by BUSINESS WIRE