Americold is enhancing its prowess for facilitating food producers and brands in scaling direct-to-consumer growth through integrated ecommerce fulfillment capabilities across the company’s Atlanta, Georgia, USA-headquartered international cold chain network.
As direct-to-consumer and omnichannel models expand across the food industry, companies are facing increased complexity in how products move from production to the end consumer. Order-level fulfillment, packaging, and last-mile delivery must be executed with precision while maintaining product integrity, speed, and consistency.
The company is supporting this shift by combining infrastructure, technology, and operational discipline to deliver end-to-end cold chain fulfillment, helping customers grow their direct-to-consumer businesses while maintaining a consistent consumer experience.
“Our customers are looking to reach consumers more directly, but doing that at scale in the cold chain requires a different level of execution,” said Americold CEO Rob Chambers. “We are extending our role in the supply chain to support that growth, bringing the same reliability and operating discipline our customers expect across more complex, consumer-facing models.”
That approach is reflected in Americold’s work with Friendswood, Texas-headquartered Good Ranchers, a direct-to-consumer meat delivery service that provides flash-frozen beef, chicken, pork, and wild-caught seafood products to an expanding customer base. As demand has grown, Americold has scaled alongside the business, supporting order preparation, packaging, and shipment at the individual consumer level while maintaining temperature integrity throughout the supply chain.
This operational foundation has enabled Good Ranchers to expand its reach and scale its direct-to-consumer business while maintaining product quality and delivery consistency, which is critical to sustaining growth in e-commerce protein distribution.
“Americold is an extension of our business,” said Ben Spell, founder and chief executive officer of Good Ranchers. “Their ability to execute at a high level, especially as our volumes have grown, has allowed us to focus on building our brand and serving our customers.”
Americold’s broader e-commerce platform reflects similar momentum, with more than one million direct-to-consumer packages shipped over the past year and double-digit growth. With capabilities across five sites, its can reach approximately 99.5% of the United States population within two days or less.
Speed and reliability are increasingly critical to customer retention in e-commerce fulfillment, making consistent execution essential as brands scale direct-to-consumer models. Supporting these capabilities is Americold’s proprietary SmarTrakr platform, which provides real-time inventory visibility, fulfillment intelligence, and shipment tracking to help customers manage direct-to-consumer operations with greater speed, accuracy, and transparency.
“Our ability to integrate storage, fulfillment, and distribution allows customers to grow without compromising the underlying operation,” said Bryan Verbarendse, president of Americold operations in the Americas. “That level of execution is what enables direct-to-consumer models to work in a temperature-controlled environment.”
The company remains focused on executing its strategic priorities, including driving organic growth in adjacent and under-penetrated segments such as e-commerce, while expanding its role across the cold chain through service-led solutions that support customer growth, operational reliability, and long-term value.
