Closing the Asynchronous Delivery Gap: Designing a Multi-Temperature Smart-Locker Service for Perishable Deliveries in High-Density Jakarta

Abstract

In Jakarta’s high-density office towers and apartments, perishable food deliveries are routinely left waiting at lobby desks because the courier arrives while the recipient is unavailable. This paper reports a qualitative, design-led study of this Asynchronous Delivery Gap and asks whether a multi-temperature smart locker, offered as a building-based service, can close it profitably. Design Thinking structured the research process; five theoretical lenses (Theory of Constraints, Decoupling Point Theory, last-yard logistics, Cold Chain Management, and UTAUT) informed the analysis; and the Business Model Canvas synthesised the findings into a business model. Evidence was drawn from eighteen field-observation sessions covering ninety courier handovers, a verified corpus of forty public reviews, eighteen user-testing sessions, and a technical and regulatory review. No handover point offered active heating or cooling, and couriers waited an average of 7 minutes 43 seconds at office towers, long enough for food-surface temperatures to fall by 11–16°C. A tested app-less web prototype removed about ninety per cent of that waiting time, and every participant completed the flow unaided. All twelve recipients accepted a usage fee while all six couriers refused to bear one, fixing where revenue can sit. The study concludes that a Smart-Locker-as-a-Service model, billed to the building or platform rather than the courier, is commercially viable, subject to pilot-stage verification of hot-hold performance.