Bella & Duke delivery: DPD, frozen boxes and freezer space

Bella & Duke delivery at a glance

Here are the delivery facts from Bella & Duke’s own pages and help centre, checked on 15 November 2026.

Who delivers, and when

DPD delivers Bella & Duke boxes. You choose the delivery day when you set up your plan, but not a time slot: Bella & Duke’s help centre says plainly that you can’t choose a delivery time slot.

What you can do is use DPD’s own delivery notifications. Bella & Duke’s help centre points customers to them for tracking the parcel and managing the delivery, for example by choosing a safe place for the box if you won’t be in. The options are DPD’s, so check what your notification offers.

If you’re new, Bella & Duke says the earliest it can generally deliver after you set up a subscription is 48 hours. If you’re running low on your dog’s current food, order a few days before you need it rather than on the last day.

What delivery costs

Delivery is free to the UK mainland. Bella & Duke adds surcharges for Northern Ireland, the Highlands and the islands, so if you live there, ask for a quote that includes it before you compare prices.

Bella & Duke’s advertised price of £1.18 a day assumes a 5–10 kg, 4-year-old dog on Adult Premium Complete with an 8 kg delivery, so the delivery size you choose is part of your price as well as your freezer plan. Our Bella & Duke price guide explains what else changes the cost.

Where Bella & Duke delivers

Bella & Duke delivers across the UK. Delivery to the mainland is free, and there are surcharges for Northern Ireland, the Highlands and the islands. The friend offer and the public offer are for UK customers, and we haven’t seen anything on Bella & Duke’s pages about delivering outside the UK, so check with its customer team if you’re unsure about your address.

Your first delivery

Your first Bella & Duke box can generally arrive 48 hours after you set up your subscription, on the day you choose. A little preparation makes delivery day straightforward.

1. Pick a day you’re likely to be in, or one where a safe place works. Remember there’s no time slot.
2. Clear freezer space the day before. The whole box needs to go in at once.
3. Watch for the courier’s notifications on the day, and manage the delivery there if your plans change.
4. Unpack straight away. Check the food is frozen, or cold to the touch, and get it into the freezer.
5. Move the first day’s food to the fridge so it’s defrosted when you need it.

If you’re switching from another food, keep some of the old food back so you can move across gradually, and ask your vet if your dog has a health condition. New households can use a friend code on their first three frozen-food orders: our Bella & Duke discount code page explains who qualifies. The current friend offer is 40% off your first two boxes, then 20% off the third, for new UK customers only.

How the food stays frozen

Bella & Duke packs the food in a double-insulated box with dry ice, designed to stay frozen over a two-day delivery. In other words, the box is built to cope if it sits on a van overnight, not just for a same-day drop.

Dry ice is very cold, so handle it with care: don’t touch it with bare hands, and keep it away from children and pets while you unpack. Follow the instructions that come in the box for getting rid of it and recycling the packaging.

If your box is delayed

If a box arrives later than planned, Bella & Duke’s help centre says if the tubs are still cold to the touch (4°C or below) you can refreeze them. That’s the rule to remember: check the food as soon as you open the box.

• Still frozen, or cold to the touch at 4°C or below: it can go in the freezer.
• Warmer than that, or you’re not sure: don’t refreeze it. Contact Bella & Duke’s customer team before you feed it or throw it away.

This matters because raw pet food can carry harmful bacteria. A Food Standards Agency survey of 380 samples (277 dog, 103 cat) found harmful bacteria in 35% of samples (it didn’t name brands). Keeping raw food properly cold is part of handling it safely. Our guide to whether raw dog food is safe covers the rest.

Freezer space: our one downside

Every Bella & Duke delivery has to go straight into the freezer, so you need space for the whole box on delivery day. After about three years with two dogs, this is the only real downside we’ve found.

We can’t tell you exactly how much room a box takes, because that depends on its size and what’s in it, but planning for it is mostly common sense:

• Check before you choose a delivery size. Clear the space you’d need and see what’s realistic. The smallest delivery is 4 kg; a bigger delivery means more to fit in at once.
• Balance size against frequency. Smaller, more frequent deliveries need less space but mean more boxes to receive, and your price per day may change. Check your quote both ways.
• Make room the day before. Clear the space before the box arrives, so the food doesn’t sit out while you rearrange.
• Use the oldest first. Put new food at the back or bottom and move the older food forward.
• Think about a second freezer if you have a big dog or more than one. Some raw-feeding households keep one just for the dogs’ food.

This is true of any frozen raw food, not just Bella & Duke. If freezer space is impossible for you, a dry or air-dried food may suit you better, and our raw vs kibble comparison sets out the trade-offs.

How long a box lasts

How long a delivery lasts depends on its size and how much your dog eats each day. Divide the weight of the delivery by your dog’s daily portion and you have the number of days.

As an illustration, the Royal Kennel Club’s guide is that dogs eat 2%–3% of their body weight in raw food a day. A 10 kg dog would eat 200 g–300 g a day, so the smallest 4 kg box would last it roughly 13–20 days. A bigger dog, or two dogs, gets through a box much faster, which is why households like ours need bigger deliveries and more freezer space.

A starting point, not veterinary advice. Ask your vet before changing your dog's diet, especially for puppies, pregnant or nursing dogs, or dogs with a health condition.

Bella & Duke works out your dog’s portion from its details when you sign up, and that’s the figure to plan around. Knowing it also helps you choose a delivery frequency: you want the next box to arrive before the freezer runs empty, but not so early that there’s nowhere to put it.

Defrosting and fridge life

Bella & Duke says to defrost food on the bottom shelf of the fridge, which takes around 24 hours. Once defrosted, it keeps in the fridge for up to four days.

That means getting into the habit of moving the next day’s food from the freezer to the fridge each day. The bottom shelf keeps drips away from food for people. Don’t defrost on the worktop, and don’t cook the food to speed things up: there’s no cooked range: the food contains bone and should not be cooked. Wash bowls, spoons and your hands after feeding.

It’s easy to forget to move food across. Rather than rushing defrosting, it helps to agree a plan in advance: some people keep a spare defrosted portion in the fridge within its up to four days, others keep a back-up food their vet is happy with. Whatever you choose, keep the bottom-shelf, covered-container habit, and throw away anything that has been in the fridge longer than Bella & Duke advises.

Our guide to storing and defrosting raw dog food covers freezer and fridge routines, how long things keep and kitchen hygiene in more detail. To work out how much your dog eats a day, and so how long a box lasts, try our raw feeding calculator.

Changing or moving a delivery

You can change your delivery date from the Subscription page of your Bella & Duke account. Changes need to be made more than 48 hours before a delivery, and there’s no minimum order or period.

Holidays and busy weeks

A frozen delivery and an empty house don’t mix well, even with dry ice. Before you go away, look at your next delivery date and move it if it falls while you’re out, leaving more than 48 hours to make the change. If your dog is staying with someone else, think about whether they have the freezer and fridge space, and the hygiene routine, for raw food, or send enough defrosted and frozen portions with your dog for the stay.

The same goes for busy weeks: if a delivery would land on a day when nobody can unpack it quickly and there’s no safe place, it’s easier to move it than to worry about it.

If you’re going away or the freezer is full, moving a delivery is usually better than letting it arrive with nowhere to put it. Our guide on how to pause or cancel Bella & Duke walks through the steps. For everything else, including what changed for our two dogs, read our Bella & Duke review.