A conversation with Greg Meyers, VP of Operations and Strategy at Get Joy Foods.
Fresh, freeze-dried dog food sounds simple enough on a label, but getting a temperature-sensitive product from a production facility to a customer’s doorstep, intact and on time, is anything but a simple freight problem. Greg Myers, who built his operations background at Bark (the company behind BarkBox) before joining Get Joy, walked through what it actually takes to move perishable pet food across the country without letting it thaw, spoil, or arrive a day late.
Reefer trucks are rarer than you’d think.
One thing Greg wishes more brokers understood:
"Reefer trucks aren't nearly as common on the road as ambient trailers, even though most people assume "refrigerated" freight is standard."
Get Joy’s frozen product ships almost exclusively via full truckload or reefer box trucks rather than LTL, largely because frozen LTL isn’t economical. Shipping a single pallet from New York to California can cost nearly as much as booking a direct truck. Being based in the tri-state area gives Get Joy a real advantage here, with more access to reefer box trucks than brands operating out of less carrier-dense regions.
Dry ice Is a countdown clock.
Every frozen shipment goes out with dry ice and insulated liners, and there’s a hard limit on how long that combination holds before the ice sublimates and the product starts to thaw. Two days is the ceiling. That constraint shapes nearly everything about Get Joy’s distribution network, which relies on three 3PL-managed facilities across the country (Indianapolis, New Jersey, and California) to hit roughly 98–99% two-day coverage.
More importantly, the facility placement pushes over half of all orders into one-day transit instead of two. That extra day of buffer means less dry ice needed per shipment and a better experience for the customer, but it also builds in insurance against delays. As Greg put it, if an order does slip, they talk about delivering on day two instead of three.
Retail adds a whole new layer of complexity.
As Get Joy has expanded beyond direct-to-consumer into marketplaces and retail, including a rollout into more than 350 Sprouts locations, the logistics puzzle multiplies. Every retailer runs its own routing guide, receiving process, and appointment system, and getting any of it wrong has real consequences. Misreporting cubic footage on a collect shipment, for example, can throw off an entire day’s pickup route across ten different locations. Onboarding a large retail partner means locking down EDI setup, labeling requirements, and routing guides well before the first purchase order ships, because handing a 3PL a routing guide right before the first pickup leaves no room to work out the kinks.
What Get Joy looks for in a transportation partner.
Beyond simply delivering on time, Greg pointed to trust as the real differentiator when evaluating brokers and carriers, like the trust that a truck will arrive when scheduled, and trust that pricing is fair without necessarily being the cheapest. A broker who treats the relationship as a long-term partnership, rather than a one-off transaction, matters even more as a business scales. Get Joy’s volume has grown from roughly $15,000 a week to $100,000 a week with the same broker relationship in place, which only works when that partner has real skin in the game.
When things go wrong.
Perishable freight means things occasionally do go wrong, and Greg shared two examples of what separates an average broker from an exceptional one. In one case, a reefer truck broke down en route, the kind of scenario that happens more than people realize. Greg’s expectation of any broker in that moment isn’t just a heads-up about the problem, but options for solving it, since he’s ultimately relying on their expertise to fix it.
The more memorable story involved a branded 1972 Volkswagen van Get Joy uses at trade shows, which had its windshield shattered by road debris on the way to a Florida expo. Rather than pointing to the fine print and declining responsibility, the broker tracked down a replacement for a rare part, made it happen before the show, and never sent a bill. It’s the kind of above-and-beyond service that builds long-term loyalty, even for a company Greg is quick to note isn’t yet moving a million dollars a month in freight.
The road ahead.
With new product lines in development and retail momentum building, Get Joy’s supply chain will only get more complex, with more facilities, more retail partners, more temperature-sensitive shipments to coordinate. But the underlying formula stays the same: find partners who communicate honestly, treat dry ice timelines as non-negotiable, and understand that in the perishable food business, on-time delivery isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the product itself.
