label Case studies
UrbanStems Fresh Flower Delivery, Powered by Onfleet 💐

2 min read

Since 2014, UrbanStems has been offering same-day delivery of farm-fresh flowers in NYC and Washington, DC. They work with sustainable Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms to create fresh, unique bouquets on-site, prior to delivery. Their complex operations rely on Onfleet for efficient routing and delivery of hundreds of fresh flower orders each day.

When the company transitioned from a third-party bike courier company to an in-house team of bike and car couriers in 2015, management knew they would need a strong technology infrastructure to help manage logistics and ensure on-time delivery for hundreds of orders a day (and 10x that for big holidays such as Valentine’s Day). They turned to Onfleet.

Onfleet’s intuitive interface and ease of use were a great match for the UrbanStems logistics team. Andy Zalan, Director of Delivery Operations and a former bike courier himself with many years of experience in logistics, especially likes the visualization features in Onfleet, which make it simple for his team to plan routes even when they don’t personally know the neighborhood. The Predictive ETA feature is also valuable, says Zalan, in helping ensure deliveries are on time.

UrbanStems has integrated Onfleet with several other in-house systems. Zapier was used to seamlessly integrate with other systems without needing to write custom code. For example, UrbanStems set up Zapier to trigger notifications to dispatchers when there are certain oversized products ordered and when UrbanStems reaches its delivery capacity for a particular delivery window so that dispatchers can close the window and prevent exceeding capacity. “That has been very helpful in level-loading our days and avoiding large spikes in the mornings and major lulls in the afternoons,” says Zalan.

“Onfleet data helps us continually fine tune our operations to find efficiency wins and improve the customer experience.”

UrbanStems also appreciates Onfleet's analytics features. “UrbanStems is data driven,” says Zalan. “Onfleet data helps us continually fine tune our operations to find efficiency wins and improve the customer experience.”

Occasionally, Zalan will take a look at other software options to make sure UrbanStems is leveraging the best technology. “We haven’t seen anything better or easier to use than Onfleet,” he says.

If you can relate to the UrbanStems operations and would like to learn more about how Onfleet can help with your complex last-mile operations, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you!