How grocery retailers deliver fresh and frozen food together in the last mile

For years, fresh and frozen grocery delivery followed separate paths to the customer. Different storage areas, different preparation workflows and, in many cases, different delivery routes. This separation made sense: it reduced complexity and limited operational risk.

However, consumer behaviour has changed, and so has the structure of the grocery basket. Today, mixed orders combining chilled and frozen items are no longer the exception. They are increasingly the norm.

Delivering both temperature ranges together in the last mile has therefore become both a strategic and an operational challenge for grocery retailers.

When fresh and frozen were handled separately

Traditional grocery delivery models were built around simplicity. Frozen products followed dedicated cold chains, while fresh products were handled independently. Routes and delivery vehicles were optimised for a single temperature range, making temperature control easier to manage and reducing coordination issues.

This approach worked well for predictable order profiles, but it also introduced limitations: higher delivery costs, lower flexibility and, in many cases, multiple deliveries to the same customer. As long as demand patterns remained stable, these trade-offs were acceptable.

Why mixed baskets are the norm

Several trends are converging at the same time. The growth of ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals, the expansion of e-grocery and home delivery, and changing consumer expectations have reshaped how groceries are purchased. Customers increasingly expect one order and one delivery, regardless of whether their basket includes fresh, chilled or frozen products.

From the customer’s perspective, separating temperature categories no longer makes sense. They are buying a meal solution, not a set of logistics constraints.

For retailers, this shift moves the challenge away from transport alone and into coordination across the entire fulfilment process.

The real challenge is not temperature, it’s coordination

Temperature control itself is a well-understood problem. In operational terms, most fresh products fall into the chilled category, which is where coordination with frozen items becomes critical. Coordination is where complexity increases.

Mixed-temperature orders affect multiple stages of the operation, from picking in different temperature zones to staging and synchronising preparation times, dispatching products with different thermal sensitivities and managing urban last-mile routes with frequent stops and variable delivery windows.

In this context, the main risk is not that products cannot be kept cold, but that processes fall out of sync. This is where operational trade-offs start to appear and where many delivery models begin to struggle.

How retailers manage fresh and frozen grocery delivery

There is no single model that works for every operation. Retailers typically combine different approaches depending on their network, order profiles and delivery constraints. These may include compartmentalisation within vehicles or containers, order-level temperature control rather than vehicle-level management, pre-conditioned packaging prepared upstream in fulfilment centres, or hybrid strategies that vary by route or region.

What these approaches have in common is a clear shift: temperature management increasingly follows the order rather than relying solely on the vehicle.

When delivering fresh and frozen together works well

Integrated delivery models tend to perform best when routes are short and dense, delivery windows are tight, fulfilment processes are well synchronised and order profiles are relatively predictable.

In these scenarios, combining fresh and frozen products within a single delivery can improve both efficiency and customer experience without introducing excessive operational risk.

When separating flows still makes sense

There are also situations where integration adds more complexity than value. Long routes with extended delivery times, low-density or rural areas, highly variable order profiles and peak periods with limited operational buffers can all make separate flows a more robust option.

Designing for flexibility, rather than forcing a single uniform model across all operations, is often the most resilient approach.

Designing delivery around the order, not just the vehicle

As grocery delivery continues to evolve, the question is no longer whether fresh and frozen products can be delivered together. The more relevant question is when it makes operational sense to do so.

Successful last-mile models are increasingly designed around the structure of the basket, the realities of fulfilment and the constraints of urban delivery. Rather than relying on a single universal solution, retailers are adapting their cold chain strategies to different delivery contexts.

In the last mile, the order often matters more than the vehicle.