Navigating the Top 5 Logistics Challenges for Food & Beverage Shippers in 2025

If you’re in food and beverage logistics, you already know. It’s getting rough out there.

Your phone’s ringing more. The problems are messier. And the solutions are more elusive.

Every day brings the same logistics challenges: Where are the drivers? How do we manage costs? Can we hit these delivery windows? The list never ends.

And what makes F&B logistics even more uniquely stressful is that there’s zero margin for error; yet the margin for success keeps shrinking. Miss a delivery window, and your customer loses shelf space. Let a reefer trailer get too warm, and you’re dealing with compliance nightmares. Delay that produce shipment by even a few hours, and you’ve got thousands of dollars of rotting product.

What’s behind all this chaos? We’ve pinpointed five significant logistics challenges. And while these problems won’t magically disappear, they’re not unsolvable either—they just require the right strategies.  

1. Labor Shortages and the Need for Scalable Workforce Capacity

The labor shortage isn’t news anymore, but the numbers are still brutal: 76% of supply chain operations reported workforce shortages in 2024, with 61% calling it an “extreme” problem. More than 60% of companies experienced transportation disruptions because they didn’t have enough warm bodies.

For F&B logistics, it’s even sloppier because your staffing needs aren’t steady—they spike during harvest seasons and holiday rushes, then disappear just as quickly. Traditional hiring can’t keep up with that kind of swing.  

The operations teams getting ahead of this aren’t just hiring more people. They’re building flexibility into their workforce from the start. That means working with staffing partners who understand logistics timing, cross-training existing staff for multiple roles, and creating systems that can absorb temporary help without everything falling apart.

Some companies are embedding external logistics talent directly into their operations—people who know the industry and can step in during a crisis without needing weeks of training. Because in F&B logistics, one understaffed shift can mean spoiled product and angry customers.

2. Skill Gaps and the Push for Embedded Logistics Expertise

Having enough bodies is essential, but that alone isn’t enough anymore—you need the right expertise. F&B logistics demands specialized knowledge that most generalists don’t have. Temperature-sensitive goods, food safety compliance, complex multimodal routes—these aren’t skills you pick up overnight.

The demand for skilled supply chain professionals continues to outpace supply, and companies can’t always afford to hire these experts full time. So your existing staff ends up wearing too many hats. Tasks like analyzing freight data, optimizing cold chain processes, or staying on top of regulatory changes get pushed aside because nobody has the time or expertise to handle them properly.

Traditional outsourcing helps, but it comes with its own logistics challenges. External consultants often don’t understand your systems or culture, creating friction instead of solutions.

The companies solving this are bringing embedded logistics expertise directly into their operations. Instead of hiring from scratch or working with distant consultants, they’re integrating specialists who already know the industry into their day-to-day workflow and can hit the ground running.

3. Process Inefficiencies Amid Cost Pressures

F&B companies are getting squeezed from every direction. Period.

Many operate on razor-thin margins of around 10%. Yet, now they’re dealing with commodity costs that have doubled, spiking labor expenses, and new tariffs.  

Making matters worse, inefficiencies are everywhere. Siloed departments doing redundant work, manual data entry creating errors, back office paperwork slowing down billing cycles, and suboptimal routing inflating transportation costs.  

That’s why the operations teams surviving this are not only cutting costs but eliminating waste. They’re streamlining workflows, removing bottlenecks, and offloading administrative busywork so their core staff can focus more intently on what moves freight and serves customers.  

Why have your best people buried in back office support services and routine tasks, when there’s clearly a better way? All it takes is reallocating tasks and leveraging more efficient staffing models.

4. Technology Integration and Visibility Gaps

Here’s another logistics challenge: Your tech stack is a mess. You’ve got one system for transportation management, another for warehouse inventory, and somehow you’re still using spreadsheets to track lot codes. None of them talk to each other, which means your team is constantly re-entering data and playing catch-up.

The lack of real-time visibility is killing you too. When you can’t easily see shipment statuses or temperature readings across your fleet because everything lives on separate platforms, you’re always reacting instead of preventing. And with the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act requiring additional digital records by January 2026, the pressure is only mounting.

The companies solving this aren’t ripping out their entire tech stack and starting over. They’re finding ways to bridge the gaps—whether through custom integrations or having dedicated teams manage the data flow between systems. Some are embedding tech-savvy logistics professionals and even AI agents who can work within existing platforms while building connections behind the scenes.

5. Supply Chain Volatility and the Mandate for Resilience

Finally, if there’s one thing the last few years taught us, it’s that disruptions are the new normal. Geopolitical conflicts are closing airspace and forcing longer reroutes. Extreme weather is wiping out crops and flooding transport routes. Trade disputes are shifting sourcing strategies overnight. And 68% of supply chain professionals expect even more disruptions throughout 2025.

For F&B logistics, these aren’t just inconveniences—they’re catastrophic. A delayed produce shipment means spoiled goods. A sudden ingredient shortage can shut down an entire production line. Regulatory changes can strike with zero notice and completely upend your compliance strategy.

That’s why the companies building resilience aren’t simply crossing their fingers and hoping for the best any longer. They’re building flexibility into their operations from the ground up. That means 24/7 coverage so issues don’t sit unaddressed overnight, scalable staffing that can handle sudden volume surges, and teams that aren’t constantly in firefighting mode.

The goal is simple: Stop playing defense and start playing offense. Instead of your team constantly putting out fires, they can plan, build backup options, find new suppliers, and create the flexibility to keep promises to customers when the next crisis hits. Because it will.

Making These Challenges Work for You

These five logistics challenges aren’t going anywhere. But here’s the thing—companies that thrive don’t run from problems, they adapt to them. That means building flexible teams, bringing in the right expertise, streamlining your operations, and creating systems that can handle whatever gets thrown at them next.

When you get this right, those logistics challenges can actually become your competitive edge.

That’s exactly what we help F&B companies achieve at Lean Solutions Group. We embed logistics expertise directly into your team, handle the process improvements that free up your core staff, and build the kind of scalable capacity that handles everything from seasonal rushes to complete curveballs.

Contact us today to see how.

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