Why delivery frequency is not a logistics question
Most brands approach delivery frequency as a pure logistics cost question: how do we minimise the number of deliveries while keeping accounts supplied? This framing is understandable but commercially incorrect. Delivery frequency is primarily a shelf availability and revenue question, and the correct delivery cadence for any account is the one that maintains OSA above 88% for that account's velocity profile.
The reason is mechanical: a supermarket account that sells 30 units of your product per day and receives a delivery every 30 days needs to carry 900 units of stock at time of delivery. Most Nigerian supermarket back-rooms cannot practically hold 900 units of a single SKU. So the account will order less, sell through it in 20 days, go out of stock for 10 days, and generate a monthly OSA of 67% despite the brand believing it is on a monthly delivery schedule.
Delivery frequency vs OSA: the data
Source: DALA field operations data, Lagos modern trade 2024–2025. OSA measured as % of store-days with product available at shelf.
The jump from bi-weekly (87%) to monthly (64%) delivery is particularly stark. A brand moving from bi-weekly to monthly delivery to reduce logistics cost is trading 23 percentage points of OSA, and the revenue loss from that OSA decline is almost always larger than the logistics saving.
Matching delivery frequency to account velocity
The correct delivery frequency for an account depends on its sales velocity, its back-room storage capacity, and the minimum order quantity your logistics can deliver economically. A high-velocity account in a flagship supermarket with limited back-room space may require twice-weekly delivery to sustain above 90% OSA. A lower-velocity account in a neighbourhood supermarket with better storage capacity may sustain good OSA on bi-weekly delivery.
The right approach is to calculate the coverage period for each account: take the account's average weekly unit sales velocity for your product, multiply by your standard delivery size, and calculate how many days that delivery will last. If the coverage period is less than 7 days for a weekly delivery schedule, the account needs a higher delivery frequency or a larger delivery quantity.
The economics of higher delivery frequency
Higher delivery frequency increases logistics cost per unit delivered, because each delivery has a fixed cost component (driver time, vehicle cost, administrative processing). A delivery of 50 units costs almost as much to execute as a delivery of 200 units. Brands managing their own delivery logistics therefore face a genuine tension between OSA optimisation and logistics cost.
Shared distribution networks reduce this tension by consolidating deliveries across multiple brands to the same store. When DALA delivers to a supermarket account, it is delivering for multiple brands simultaneously, which means the fixed cost per delivery is shared, and the economics of higher frequency become more favourable for each individual brand.
