Schwan’s Ushers In Yelloh Rebrand With Big Consumer Insights Investments

Schwan’s Home Delivery — now Yelloh — is making a big investment in its personalization and fulfillment capabilities to seize on growing direct-to-consumer opportunities. 

As the DTC frozen food company seeks to connect more closely with consumers within its brand evolution — it changed its name to Yelloh earlier this year as part of a brand refresh — it sought to optimize delivery times and personalize product recommendations. 

The 70-year-old company had designated three of its delivery hubs in the Chicago area as an Innovation Lab, using them to develop and test new experience technologies to become a more modern mobile retailer. Upon success in the Lab, these technologies have been rolled out across select neighborhood delivery hubs in the U.S. 

As part of this, the company tapped AWS to expand upon a 2021 pilot to level-up Schwan’s direct-to-consumer experiences and fulfillment options. During the pilot, the family-owned Schwan’s/Yelloh, which counts more than 4,000 employees among its ranks, tested solutions with consumers using a two-way messaging service. The service notifies Schwan’s/Yelloh customers when their mobile store will be in the neighborhood to confirm availability for a stop — an especially crucial factor when it comes to fresh and frozen food delivery. 

[See also: Consumer Data and the DTC Transformation]

Machine learning powers the product recommendations, so consumers receive suggested food items based on order history and like-buyer basket items. Yelloh drivers now also receive precision routing and improved consumer insights for improved work experiences. 

Kevin Boyum, chief strategy officer of Yelloh, noted that it took just a few weeks to stand up the solution and begin realizing increased productivity, mileage savings, and enhanced experiences. These insights are also enabling it to optimize its product innovation processes, at the Chicago-area delivery hubs, more than 75% of consumers opted into such new services as digital door knock and delivery route optimization, according to the company. 

Justin Honaman, head, worldwide consumer products and retail go-to-market at AWS, added that Schwan’s/Yelloh will be able to tap into both customer and fleet data to build personalized and connected solutions to boost the overall end customer experience and maximize the efficiency of its delivery operations. 

Join Boyum and Honaman in a webinar with CGT this month for a deep dive into the company and its new capabilities.