Mitigate

FOOD UNION DRIVER

Optimising ice cream delivery and sales processes using the latest technology.

Ruby on RailsReact Native

Brief

One of Food Union’s services in Norway and Denmark is to deliver and sell ice cream on the streets. Everybody knows the ice cream trucks that drive around and stop at certain places, selling their ice cream.


Food Union realised that the routes these trucks take and the stops they make are not based on any direct sales data. They also noticed that it wasn’t possible to systematically monitor the efficiency of the salespeople. The outdated practice of giving drivers a printed route map at the start of their shift needed to change as soon as possible.

Technical solution

Mitigate developed a set of tools – an electronic route planner, a customer self-service environment and a mobile app for its drivers – that helped completely overhaul the existing inefficient process.

For drivers

The digital planner records existing routes by sequentially marking points on the map and assigning them to a specific driver. Each truck has an Android tablet with the Food Union Driver navigation app installed. It supports turn-by-turn Mapbox navigation, allowing the drivers to navigate new and unfamiliar routes. The app records each stop and its duration, sending the information to BI for further processing.

For customers

Customers can find the nearest ice cream delivery truck by visiting the website, sign up for a stop and even receive a notification just before the truck arrives. The route planner shows the driver the minimum time required to stop and serve customers based on the number of people that have registered for a particular stop. It also calculates the ETA for the subsequent stops accordingly.

In addition to the driver app

The trucks are equipped with POS terminals that record transactions, as well as a Mapon GPS tracker. At the end of the route, the data from both sources is aggregated to analyse the efficiency of the route travelled and adjust future routes.

In addition to improving routes, the route planner has other functions:

  • fleet and workload planning,
  • generation of end-of-day reports,
  • stock-keeping,
  • an online store for ordering ice cream.

One of the Food Union’s innovations is the introduction of a gamification element for drivers. During the day, the drivers are ranked based on the number of transactions recorded by the POS. Several drivers have already taken to this feature, boosting the Food Union’s income in a fun way.

Technologies we used to create the FOOD UNION DRIVER solution:

iOS / android / cross-platform

Mobile apps

Business critical

Software development

UI / UX

Design