A Night In The Life: Arthur David Style!

At the heart of Arthur David's success lies our Night Operations Team, a group of passionate individuals who work tirelessly to ensure that every aspect of the Food With Service night operations runs as smoothly as it possibly can.

Our Night Operations Team is a well-oiled machine, orchestrating the intricate dance that happens when the rest of the world sleeps. Comprising skilled professionals from various culinary backgrounds, logistics experts, and meticulous planners, this team operates during the crucial night time hours to prepare, package, and despatch high-quality food products to customers across the region. Many people wont ever get to see the difference between day and night at Arthur David, but we will paint you a picture with two words - Organised chaos!

We like to call our night operations team our secret weapon, the un-sung heroes of the business - We rely on them heavily to make sure everything runs smoothly! The dedicated individuals that we have working for us ensure that our drivers come in with their customers orders picked and vans loaded, ready to deliver that day. A few hours kip and then they’re back too it again that night, it is a truly incredible operation to see first hand.

We are incredibly proud of our team here at Arthur David, not only do they work tirelessly every night to pick and pack all of your orders, but they do it in ALL types of weather. For those that don’t know, the majority of our stock (excluding fine foods ingredients) are kept in temperature controlled environments, meaning it is very colddddddd!

We have multiple different shift patterns that we work around our staff members, and we even have a staff bus that picks up and takes staff home that are unable to drive. This service runs from Midsomer Norton and Bristol, and we have around 80 members of staff that we help get in and out of work, completely free of charge!

The unpredictable British weather has the potential to cause huge issues here at Arthur David. We never want any of our staff members to be put in potentially dangerous situations where they are risking their lives. The snow and ice not only causes issues for our vans and artic lorry’s, but it causes huge issues for staff members travelling to work. Our main HQ site is on the outskirts of Bristol, in a little village called Bishop Sutton and it is very remote. The journey from all directions involves lots of lanes which are hard enough to navigate on the best of days, throw some ice & snow in the mix and they become virtually impossible.

We sat down with our 2 head of order fulfilment managers Tom Bristow & Ryan Beaven to talk about their team and experience running the night shift.

"No two shifts are the same at Arthur David. Each night we face different obstacles, from being out in all weather conditions, to traffic flow in the yard, this leads to the need of quick thinking and quick decision making, ensuring our colleges safety is the priority in everything we do. On a usual night we pick and load around 28000 packages, across 80+ vans and lorries. Each shift we have between 63-70 operators on site at any one time. We must ensure all orders are picked and loaded, with the best quality produce in a very tight time gap, between runs to ensure that the driver is not delayed leaving the yard. This requires great communication from the leaders on each shift, respect and a massive amount of teamwork".

Georgina Williams - Marketing Assistant