About Yo Gusto

Hato Potrero Farm Inc. is a family-owned dairy manufacturer created by its Founder and CEO Gustavo A. Perez in the year 2,000. They produce all their dairy products with fresh Grade A cow’s milk. Their premier product brand of drinkable yogurts is called Yo Gusto. Mr. Perez started this business knocking door-to-door and today Yo Gusto has become one of the top-selling brand of its kind in major super stores like Walmart, Target, Publix, and other main Florida’s Supermarkets.

Their manufacturing plant is located in Clewiston, Fl, and the Distribution warehouse is based in Medley, FL.  They too manufacture other dairy products like cheese, milk, sour cream, and more! Yo Gusto operates under strict sanitary conditions, and guidelines controlled by the FDA which separates them from competitors. 

The Yo Gusto brand is continuously growing nationwide, and soon expect to have their products available in all 50 states. They also export their products to Central and South America, and the Caribbean.

Project Scope

Yo Gusto has been achieving a constant high annual growth rate over the last years. The brand has become one of the top-selling Yogurts in the United States and in order to maintain their growth and keep up with customer demands the company needed to think of ways to optimize their warehouse operations. Distributing products to large retail supermarkets like Walmart, Publix, Target among others, is a very challenging task that needs to be managed  flawlessly in order to maintain the business relationship, achieve constant growth and access to other States.

The Situation

High customer demand generated Yo Gusto the need to expand their facility or change to a material handling solution that would allow them to have more storage space. Yo Gusto product line has high-rotation, is perishable and has a low life-cycle span, reason why the selective racking they currently had for their operations was not ideal for their operations.

Selective Pallet Rack as the traditional racking solution is a great storage option because its affordable, allows easy access to products, is very versatile and offers easy usability. But for food industry operations this might not be the ideal solution if you need to save time and save space. For perishable goods or products with a short life span, it always better to go with another FIFO solution that offers more efficiency.

Yo Gusto was losing a lot of time and space with their picking operation because selective rack works with levels and rows and the operators had to travel long distances and heights to reach pallets.

Selective Pallet Racking

The Solution: Pallet Flow Racking

Pallet flow racking is a dynamic, FIFO (first-in, first-out), gravity flow pallet rack system ideal for perishable, high volume, and high-rotation goods. These high-density gravity flow pallet racking systems can store 2-20+ pallets per lane, increasing storage capacity by up to 50% compared to standard selective racking.

Gravity flow racking uses wheels or rollers to roll pallets from the loading zone to the pick face, allowing fast-paced warehouses to optimize their material handling workflows while saving up to 75% in labor and equipment costs.

In pallet flow rack systems, pallets are loaded onto one side of the system and gravity moves the pallets via roller track to the other end, where they’re unloaded. The FIFO inventory management system ensures that expiration-sensitive products are consistently rotated, and one SKU is stored per lane.

The Results

Installing Pallet Flow Racking in Yo Gusto Distribution Center improved their operations tremendously and solved all their problems. In first place, they didn’t need to move to a bigger warehouse, saving them all the time, distribution and economic hassles that come with a warehouse relocation project. Secondly, the High-Density pallet flow rack allowed them to duplicate their storage space, allowing them to store twice the amount of product in the same floorspace.

Finally, the amount of time they are saving in their logistics operations was definitely worth the investment since they have managed to supply their high-demanding customers with their yogurts in record times!

Pallet Flow Rack
Pallet Flow Rack
Pallet Flow Rack