Case Study: SOS Meals on Wheels achieves doubled meal deliveries and lower operating costs with RouteSavvy

RouteSavvy Helps SOS Meals on Wheels DOUBLE Its Meal Deliveries During The Pandemic & Beyond

SOS Meals on Wheels, a nonprofit serving homebound seniors around Oakland, California, faced a surge in demand when the COVID-19 pandemic added about 1,500 new clients in nine months and forced daily routes to grow from roughly 52 to as many as 94. With 26 paid drivers, 30–40 volunteers, and thousands of daily miles to cover, the organization needed a scalable routing solution instead of the manual, time-consuming Google Maps “guess-timate” process it had used previously.

SOS Meals on Wheels implemented RouteSavvy route planning software to save and reuse optimized routes, keep the same drivers on consistent rounds for daily wellness checks, and speed new-client onboarding from 3–4 days to about 48 hours. RouteSavvy helped the nonprofit increase deliveries from 437,000 to 570,000 meals year-over-year while only raising mileage reimbursement costs from $105,000 to $120,000, demonstrating significant efficiency gains during massive expansion.

SOS Meals on Wheels

Charlie Deterline

Executive Director