For a growing number of customers, FreshDirect is just not delivering.
Six months ago, the pioneering online grocer moved from Long Island City to a larger warehouse in The Bronx, where it strung up nine miles of conveyor belts that were supposed to sort everything from cereal to steaks and get the stuff onto delivery trucks more efficiently.
Instead, persistent technical glitches have turned the move into a disaster, botching food orders, straining relationships with suppliers and costing its longtime chief executive and co-founder, Jason Ackerman, his job in September.
“I’m surprised there hasn’t been a lawsuit already,” a source close to the situation told The Post.
Now the 16-year-old company — once the darling of wealthy urbanites who were willing to pay a premium to have their food delivered to their doorstep — is losing those customers rapidly as new competitors circle, according to sources close to the situation.
“I used to spend an average of $700 a month with you,” wrote Ingrid Rose on the company’s Facebook page on Nov. 27. “But service has been so bad, I hardly ever order anymore. I used to be a super fan and I miss what you used to be.”
At issue is the high-tech equipment FreshDirect installed at its new, 400,000-square-foot facility this summer. Ever since, sources say, the new gear has suffered a myriad of daily hiccups, from missing or spilled items, trucks that arrive much later than the two-hour window — or not at all — and last-minute notifications about items that are not available and removed from customers’ orders.
FreshDirect declined an interview with The Post but insisted that its service problems are in the past and that it has no beef with its technology providers.
“Our service levels are consistently back to where they were before the transition and they’re better in some cases,” a spokesman said in an e-mail, adding that “our relationships with our technology partners are still strong.”
Scores of social media posts from customers and current and former employees suggest otherwise.
“You know what sucks?” wrote Kelly Karousos Costa on FreshDirect’s Facebook page on Dec. 7. “Waiting for a delivery that never came til 1 am wen you have to get up at 5 am for work.”
Another longtime customer, Sandra J. of Manhattan, wrote on Yelp on Dec. 1, “the last year has been appalling! Items left out of orders, broken eggs, and today an entire bag not included – Going to Amazon!”
FreshDirect drivers who asked to remain anonymous told The Post that conveyor belts at the facility frequently stop moving suddenly, creating chaos and long delays that can keep many of them waiting outside long past their shifts.
“The internal mechanisms were dysfunctional,” wrote a former human resource employee on Glassdoor about the new equipment in The Bronx, adding that “testing was not properly executed and management failed to anticipate/address disaster scenarios.”
The snafus have cost FreshDirect at least 20 percent of its market share to grocers who are aggressively promoting their delivery services and expanding their relationship with delivery service Instacart, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger of Strategic Resources Group.
Fairway, Whole Foods and ShopRite and others are feasting on its disgruntled customers.
“They have been capitalizing on FreshDirect’s stumbles,” Flickinger said.
Indeed, Instacart has added 170 new ZIP codes in the New York metro area over the past year, and added 25 new retailers, including Aldi, ShopRite and Foodtown, the San Francisco-based company said.
“We see customers wanting same day delivery from grocery stores and that’s something that is difficult for FreshDirect to replicate,” Nilam Ganenthiran, Instacart’s chief business officer, told The Post.
When FreshDirect launched in 2002 “They were the only game in town,” said Morton Williams owner Avi Kaner. “But its share of wallet is diminishing each time a new competitor comes in.”
Two weeks after Ackerman was fired, the new chief executive, David McInerney, sent out an e-mail apologizing for the shoddy service, blaming it on a transition that “has not been as smooth as we planned.”