7-Eleven Australia has partnered with Emergent Cold to evolve its expand its supply chain capabilities and focus on fresh food.
The convenience store chain has already rolled out the first phase of the partnership by increasing its ambient food and drinks deliveries from weekly to daily.
Other key categories will move over to the new supply chain in a phased migration between now and August.
7-Eleven CEO Angus McKay said the partnership offered the company a supply chain which can rapidly scale, expand and respond to demand and network growth.
“We’ve been working on this project for three years. The new supply chain ecosystem will help our stores to make sure they have what their customers need when they need it. One delivery per day, instead of once a week for ambient and frozen products, will help our franchisees to better manage inventory control and cash-flow. It also has operational benefits as store team members are not having to manage huge delivery volumes at once, or daily multi temperature single vehicle deliveries,” Mr McKay said.
The new arrangement will handle huge volumes of daily stock – include 4,000 sandwiches, 6,000 packs of sushi, 8,000 meat pies, 16,000 sausage rolls and an incredible 30,000 cartons of ilk per day. And each week,, 4.5 million product units will be delivered to 7-Eleven stores in 70 specially designed trucks.
“7-Eleven is growing strongly, and while our supply chain has served us well, it needs to evolve to enable our future growth. With more than 700 stores, we have well and truly outgrown our previous supply chain system, we needed to control our own supply chain. Our new supply chain ecosystem with our strategic partner Emergent Cold will enable us to expand to meet our projected volumes and ambitious store network growth,” Mr McKay said.
“Our new ecosystem will further strengthen the direct relationship we have with many of our suppliers. We’re focused on working to deliver collective sustainable growth for our store owners, our suppliers and our business overall by ensuring our customers can buy the products and services they want, at the time and in the store that suits them, in the quantity they need.”