How Grocery Delivery Services Can Be Used To Combat Food Deserts

Highlights

•: Consolidating grocery delivery to neighborhood stores tin address food insecurity.
•: Nosotros quantify the extent and benefits of spatial and temporal consolidation of orders.
•: The number and size of time windows for habitation delivery bear on temporal consolidation.
•: The vehicle capacity, the number of depots, and number of customers bear upon spatial consolidation.
•: The number of stores and the walkable distance parameter impact the service level.

Abstruse

For many socioeconomically disadvantaged customers living in food deserts, the high costs and minimum order size requirements make attended grocery deliveries financially non-feasible, although it has a potential to provide good for you foods to the nutrient insecure population. This newspaper proposes consolidating customer orders and delivering to a neighborhood convenience store instead of home delivery. We employ an optimization framework involving the minimum cost gear up covering and the capacitated vehicle routing problems. Our experimental studies in three counties in the U.S. suggest that by spatial and temporal consolidation of orders, the deliverer tin remove minimum society-size requirements and reduce the delivery costs, depending on various factors, compared to attended home-delivery. We discover the number and size of time windows for home delivery to exist the most important factor in achieving temporal consolidation benefits. Other significant factors in achieving spatial consolidation include the capacity of commitment vehicles, the number of depots, and the number of customer orders. We also find that the number of partner convenience stores and the walkable altitude parameter of the model have a significant impact on the number of accepted orders, i.e., the service level provided by the deliverer. The findings of this study imply consolidated grocery delivery as a viable solution to improve fresh nutrient access in food deserts. In calorie-free of the recent global pandemic and its exacerbating effects on food insecurity, the innovative solution proposed in this paper is even more relevant and timely.

Keywords

Food deserts

Concluding-mile delivery

Spatial consolidation

Temporal consolidation

Vehicle routing

Cited by (0)

Zulqarnain Haider is a Data Scientist in Supply Chain Technology team at Walmart Inc. At Walmart he works on optimization problems in middle mile transportation and replenishment systems. His research interests include awarding of Operations Enquiry techniques to urban transportation systems, shared mobility systems and natural resources management problems. His research encompasses issues related to sustainable urban transportation systems and conservation planning/environmental protection.

Yujie Hu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the Academy of Florida. He is as well affiliated with the UF Informatics Found and UF Transportation Establish. His enquiry interests are urban transportation, human mobility, and accessibility. Hu is a recipient of the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). His research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation, ORAU, and Florida Sea Grant. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Southeastern Geographer and the Board of the Transportation Geography Specialty Grouping of the American Association of Geographers.

Hadi Charkhagard is an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering and he is the director of the multi-objective optimization laboratory at the University of Due south Florida. Prior to this position, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has a rail record of creating innovative techniques for solving optimization problems that are published in highly-ranked journals in operations enquiry.

David Himmelgreen is a Professor of Anthropology at the Academy of S Florida. He is a biocultural nutritional anthropologist with expertise in maternal-child nutrition, nutrient security, dietary change and wellness, and community nutrition programming. He has conducted inquiry in Republic of costa rica, the U.S., Puerto Rico, Lesotho, and Republic of india. Himmelgreen co-founded the Hunger Activeness Alliance with Feeding Tampa Bay and is the Managing director of the Center for the Advancement of Food Security and Healthy Communities.

Changhyun Kwon is an Acquaintance Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Applied science at the Academy of Southward Florida. His enquiry interests include urban transportation, logistics, service operations, adventure management, and location decision problems. His research has been supported by various organizations including the National Science Foundation, the U.South. Department of Transportation, and Canadian Embassy. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER accolade in 2014. He is the electric current Chair of the Urban Transportation Special Interest Group within the INFORMS Transportation Scientific discipline and Logistics Lodge.

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