In the cold chain world, every box of frozen food that lands on a doorstep reflects a cost decision made days earlier. One example is whether to pack five pounds of dry ice or 15. Underpacking can mean the product arrives thawed, while overpacking forces a brand to pay to move weight it did not need.

That calculation, repeated across millions of orders, is the business Grip built. The Miami-based cold chain fulfillment company is now putting a 40-year veteran of frozen and refrigerated distribution in charge of its national operation.

Grip said Tuesday that John Hummel will join the company as president of Grip Fulfillment, where he will lead national fulfillment operations. For e-commerce brands that rely on Grip to ship pet food, prepared meals and grocery orders, the hire brings extensive operating experience to a high-stakes segment of logistics. In this business, a shipping decision that comes up short on refrigerant, or adds a day in transit, can erode margin or destroy the product entirely, which is why fulfillment leadership tends to matter as much as software in this category.

Hummel previously served as president of Burris Logistics’ Custom Distribution division, where he oversaw five frozen and refrigerated distribution centers and eight direct-to-consumer fulfillment facilities. Before that, he was president of United Natural Foods Inc.’s Central/Southeast Region, where he ran eight distribution centers with more than $6 billion in annual sales. Earlier in his career, he led operations for 31 distribution centers at Reinhart Foodservice as the company expanded from $2 billion to $7 billion.

“I’ve known Juan since his ButcherBox days, and I’ve followed Grip’s journey ever since,” Hummel said. “Joining the team to lead its fulfillment operation is an incredible opportunity.”

Grip said it has shipped more than $3 billion in perishable goods since launching in 2022. Its fulfillment centers in New Jersey, Texas, Michigan, Nevada and Florida reach more than 80% of the U.S. population within 24 hours, and the rest of the country within 48 hours.

Why cold chain fulfillment stayed fragmented

Founder and CEO Juan Camilo Meisel worked on the early team at ButcherBox, helping scale the company past $500 million, before starting Grip in 2022. The opportunity he saw was not a lack of consumer demand. It was the gap between that demand and the infrastructure serving it.

“Consumer behavior had changed. People now know that they can buy refrigerated and frozen items online and you also have all these beautiful brands popping up, but in the middle you have a fragmented industry,” Meisel told FreightWaves.

He said much of the existing infrastructure was designed for pallets moving to grocery shelves, not parcels moving to front doors.

“So you have multiple pallet-in, pallet-out facilities on one end where you have to work with multiple providers to get a good nationwide coverage,” Meisel said. “And it’s also just providers that are not designed for e-commerce or CPG products.”

The software layer, he added, was similarly disconnected from the physical operation.

“And then you have also someone else managing technology that is just not connected to what you’re seeing and what you do on the ground,” he said.

The dry ice math

Grip’s response was to build an order management system designed for perishables rather than adapt software built for dry goods. For perishable e-commerce, an OMS has to determine origin, refrigerant type, refrigerant weight, insulation, carrier and service level for each order.

“It’s a thinking software because behind it it’s making all these decisions for the final user,” Meisel said.

Meisel contrasted that with what he called flat logic, saying it can fail in both directions.

“You could say, ‘Hey, I’m going to ship every single one of my boxes that takes two days to get to the final customer with 10 pounds of dry ice.’ That’s a flat logic,” he said. “But the reality is that there’s a specific box that will be benefited by having 15 pounds and not 10 because you would be improving the end customer experience. You would be reducing waste and you would be increasing your lifetime value.”

The reverse can happen as well.

“The same order that the flat logic would require 10 pounds of dry ice can actually ship with five while maintaining high quality,” Meisel said. “Which as you know in shipping every single pound matters.”

Grip says its system can reduce brand shipping costs by up to 30% and lower shipping failures by 25%. Meisel said the all-in savings can be even higher.

“We’ve seen savings as much as 30-40% of how much our customers were spending before working with us,” he said. “And it’s all accumulated … what percentage of the country can you cover in one day in transit versus two day in transit as well because you see different damage rates for those two.”

Why a career operator matters

“It’s things that are crucial for humans, crucial for people. It’s things that people are feeding their families with,” Meisel said. “And there just needs to be a super high standard of quality that comes down to the actual operation that you have on the ground, but then also all the technology and traceability of how you’re orchestrating that internally.”

Meisel said Hummel’s background fits that requirement.

“John has spent nearly four decades building world-class cold-chain operations and understands this business at every level,” Meisel said. “As we continue investing in our fulfillment operation, his leadership and operational expertise will help us deliver even greater value to our customers.”

Where Grip grows next

Meisel said the company’s next phase will not be driven by opening facilities in every remaining market. Grip already reaches 80% of the country in a day, and he said trying to cover the final 1% or 2% would cost customers more than it would return.

“Optimizing for that extra one or 2% is pretty challenging,” he said. “You don’t necessarily want to do that because then you also split your customers’ inventory too much.”

Instead, Grip plans to deepen capacity in its existing five regions while continuing to build software. That approach reflects a broader reality in cold-chain logistics: adding footprint is only part of the equation, and operational throughput, inventory placement and packaging decisions can matter just as much for brands shipping products that must stay within temperature range.

“We have been expanding capacity within the regions that we’ve been at for the last couple years non-stop and we’re going to keep doing that for the next couple years as well,” Meisel said. “So we’re head down building technology. We build technology pretty fast … So that compounding with just increased quality and throughput from our facilities is the next phase for us.”

He said the broader category should continue to grow as more products move into the natural space and require refrigeration, whether frozen or refrigerated.

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