Food & beverage distribution
Every drop lands before the kitchen opens
Plan tomorrow's multi-drop rounds across restaurants, cafés, schools and bars in one pass, then dispatch them, follow them live, and capture proof at every back door. Open source and self-hostable.
Why it's hard
In wholesale delivery, the receiving window matters more than the distance
Every drop on a foodservice round comes with a time attached. The café wants it before service, the school kitchen has a receiving window measured in minutes, and the pub cellar is only staffed from ten. Sequence by postcode and you will be early somewhere that cannot take the pallet and late somewhere that has already started prepping without it.
Most teams run this on a spreadsheet and a phone, then rebuild the plan by hand every time an order lands late or a van goes off the road. The software that solves it properly is usually quoted per vehicle and gated behind a sales call. Hikyaku puts the planning, dispatch and proof in one place, and you can host it on your own infrastructure.
Where it goes wrong
The problems that make a delivery round expensive
Rounds planned by postcode alone
Geography puts two drops next to each other; the receiving windows put them four hours apart. Planning that ignores the window turns a full van into a second run.
Tomorrow's plan rebuilt by hand every night
Imagaine this: Orders close at five, the plan is drawn at six, and one late order or one driver calling in sick means starting the whole sequence again.
“Where is my delivery?” calls all morning
Chefs ring the office because they have no other way to find out. Somebody rings the driver, the driver pulls over, and two people lose ten minutes.
Proof of delivery that lives in a cab
Signed paper notes come back with the van, if they come back at all. A short-delivery claim three weeks later is unanswerable.
Same-day and urgent orders that bypass the plan
The chef who forgot the cream gets slotted in over the phone, onto whichever driver answers, even if another van is closer.
Fuel spend nobody can attribute to a round
A shoebox of receipts at month end, with no way to tie a fill-up to the run that needed it.
How Hikyaku helps
One system from the order book to the back door
Plan the whole round in one pass
Drop in the day's orders and optimise. Hikyaku sequences multi-drop rounds across your vans from the depot out, planning each drop around its customer's receiving window.
Delivery windows on every stop
Set the window each customer can receive in (early-morning restaurant drops, school mealtime slots, cellar hours) and the plan works around it.
A live dispatch board
Every van, every drop and every ETA on one screen, updating as drivers move. When a chef calls, the answer is already there.
Tracking links for your customers
Each delivery gets a page with a live map and a status timeline, no login needed. Send it to the kitchen and the morning calls stop.
Proof captured at the drop
Drivers take a photo and a signature at the back door. It lands on the delivery immediately, so a short-delivery query is a lookup rather than an argument.
Fuel cards tied to the round
Issue cards to drivers with per-driver spend controls, and record fuel spend against the rounds you planned. It's optional, for fleets that want it.
Planning
Plan around when each door opens
Every stop carries its own receiving window and service time, so the optimiser builds a round your customers can accept.
One plan covers the multi-drop rounds for every van on shift. Change an order at seven in the morning and re-optimise only what has not gone out yet.
A depot and its numbered drops, sequenced into one round.
Proof
Every drop comes back with evidence attached
A photo of the pallet inside the door, a signature from whoever took it, and a time and location stamp, all captured in the driver app and attached to the delivery before the van pulls away.
When a customer disputes a case count six weeks later, you can pull up the record with one search.
Delivered
Today at 9:58 AM · Aoki Books, Chiyoda
Proof of delivery
3 photos · Taken by Kenji Watanabe
Order book to back door
How a delivery day runs
Orders close
The day's orders land in Hikyaku: entered by your team, pushed in over the REST API, or automated through the n8n plugin from the system you already take orders in.
The round is built
Optimise across your available vans and drivers. Each drop keeps its receiving window, so the sequence is one your customers can take.
Vans go out
The round pushes to the driver app stop by stop. Your dispatch board fills in with live positions, and each customer's tracking link goes live.
Drops are proved
Drivers take a photo and signature at each back door. Both are stamped, filed against the delivery, and visible on the tracking page and in the dashboard the moment they are taken.
On the dispatch board
One screen for the whole morning round
Dispatch board screenshot
Placeholder — see note below for where to capture this.
Who it's for
Built for the vans that supply the kitchen
Foodservice distributors
Supplying restaurants, cafés, hotels, schools and care homes on standing rounds with tight receiving windows.
Drinks wholesalers
Delivering to pubs, bars and off-trade around cellar and stockroom hours, with returns and empties collected on the same visit.
Produce, bakery and dairy rounds
Early-morning multi-drop rounds where the whole day's work happens before most businesses open.
FAQ
Common questions from wholesale teams
Can Hikyaku plan multi-drop rounds across several vans?
Yes. Give it the day's orders and the vehicles and drivers available, and it sequences them into rounds from your depot, taking each stop's delivery window and service time into account as well as distance.
Can we set different delivery windows per customer?
Yes. You set a window per stop, so an early-morning restaurant drop, a school's mealtime slot and a pub's cellar hours can all sit on the same round without fighting each other.
Will our customers be able to see where their delivery is?
Every delivery gets a shareable tracking page with a live map and a status timeline, and it needs no login. Send it to the kitchen and the “where is my order” calls largely stop.
How do we prove a delivery was made?
Drivers capture a photo and a signature in the app at the drop, stamped with the time and location. It attaches to the delivery immediately and stays searchable, so you can settle disputes from the record.
Can orders come in from our existing ERP or order system?
Yes. Push orders in over the REST API, or skip the engineering project and use the n8n plugin, which connects Hikyaku to whatever you already take orders in and sends delivery updates back out.
Do we have to use your cloud?
No. Hikyaku is open source and self-hostable. Run it on your own infrastructure with your own database, or start on the hosted version and move later. The data stays yours either way.
How does this compare to the incumbent routing vendors?
Most are closed-source, quoted per vehicle and gated behind a sales call before you see a number. Hikyaku covers planning, dispatch, the driver app, customer tracking and proof of delivery in one platform whose source you can read and whose server you can own. The comparison page sets it against the platforms that do publish pricing.
How long does it take to get a fleet running?
Start a trial and plan a round the same day. There is no implementation project between you and a first optimised route. Self-hosting takes as long as standing up the container and a Postgres database.
Plan tomorrow's round on Hikyaku
Open source and self-hostable. Bring a day of orders and watch them fall into rounds your customers can actually receive.