Day 74: Day 21 in MOWI
- Tarrant Area Food Bank Orientation
Today we went to the Food Bank to learn more about the organization and the process of ordering. Remember when you have food drive and you bring a can to the drive... well the food from the food drive also go to the Food Bank, where surplus of food donated or unwanted from restaurants, grocery stores and USDA is distributed to 300 other agencies. USDA is the biggest contributor for named brand products, even though the Food Bank is not mainly funded by USDA. The second big contributor to the extra food is the food industry. They have two programs under that... one is the Feeding Program where churches or site will provide family-style meals. They just let people come in and eat the meals they prepared. Another is the food pantry which acts like the grocery store for the agencies. It is surprising to find that 5-6 million of fresh produce does not make it out to the field, yet people are still starving.
The reason why grocery stores would donate food because sometimes relabeling items are more expensive that just giving them away. Traceability and extension of expiry date are important to the Food Bank. For example, they van keep dry goods for up to one year, frozen meat for six months to one year, egg for 30-25 days and milk for 7-10 days.
The Food Bank has Backpack program which is to pack the extra food, such as milk, cereal bar etc, for the children. This backpack of food usually lasts children for the weekends when they do not get breakfast from school. This program has extended to cover summer holidays as well. Food Bank also has a great program called Community Kitchen, where people who are willing to learn skills for changing their lives. The Community Kitchen provides culinary arts and foodservice arts. It is really nice to see how the Community Kitchen is directly linked the the Food Bank and is able to use the extra food that Food Bank does not want or want to get rid of urgently.
Food Bank seems to have a system of their own when it comes to receiving a big bulk of food. It would be difficult for us to come in and implement a new system. Since frozen food, cool food and dry goods all come in bulk, the staff must be quick in decision making of keeping, naming and storing the products. They have lot numbers that tell them when it comes in and the PO number for tracking, and have inventory number which tells them the category of products. They use net wight, instead of gross weight. Agencies can go through the database and order the food they want like a shopping cart. (The database only put up items with 30 cases or more). They could go through the "Pick and Weigh", which is similar to the supermarket where you choose what you want there and pay for the weight. (Pick and Weigh is where they put items that are less than 30 cases for agencies to pick).
- CSS Tally
After this CSS Tally, I think I am good in creating efficient process. I am not the project manager for this project, so I do not get much credits for coming up with the tallying system. However, I'm still kind of involved in the project. I came up with an assembly line for different sections, as well as, using google doc for the short answers and names for the prize draw. Today is the first time where all of us come together and tally in an assembly line. It is not as efficient as I wanted to be as the project manager was not good in enforcing the system where each person is in charge of one section... or two people for one larger part (short answers part).
Oh well, as long as we get the job done and I know that I am capable :)
ct.
Today we went to the Food Bank to learn more about the organization and the process of ordering. Remember when you have food drive and you bring a can to the drive... well the food from the food drive also go to the Food Bank, where surplus of food donated or unwanted from restaurants, grocery stores and USDA is distributed to 300 other agencies. USDA is the biggest contributor for named brand products, even though the Food Bank is not mainly funded by USDA. The second big contributor to the extra food is the food industry. They have two programs under that... one is the Feeding Program where churches or site will provide family-style meals. They just let people come in and eat the meals they prepared. Another is the food pantry which acts like the grocery store for the agencies. It is surprising to find that 5-6 million of fresh produce does not make it out to the field, yet people are still starving.
The reason why grocery stores would donate food because sometimes relabeling items are more expensive that just giving them away. Traceability and extension of expiry date are important to the Food Bank. For example, they van keep dry goods for up to one year, frozen meat for six months to one year, egg for 30-25 days and milk for 7-10 days.
The Food Bank has Backpack program which is to pack the extra food, such as milk, cereal bar etc, for the children. This backpack of food usually lasts children for the weekends when they do not get breakfast from school. This program has extended to cover summer holidays as well. Food Bank also has a great program called Community Kitchen, where people who are willing to learn skills for changing their lives. The Community Kitchen provides culinary arts and foodservice arts. It is really nice to see how the Community Kitchen is directly linked the the Food Bank and is able to use the extra food that Food Bank does not want or want to get rid of urgently.
Food Bank seems to have a system of their own when it comes to receiving a big bulk of food. It would be difficult for us to come in and implement a new system. Since frozen food, cool food and dry goods all come in bulk, the staff must be quick in decision making of keeping, naming and storing the products. They have lot numbers that tell them when it comes in and the PO number for tracking, and have inventory number which tells them the category of products. They use net wight, instead of gross weight. Agencies can go through the database and order the food they want like a shopping cart. (The database only put up items with 30 cases or more). They could go through the "Pick and Weigh", which is similar to the supermarket where you choose what you want there and pay for the weight. (Pick and Weigh is where they put items that are less than 30 cases for agencies to pick).
- CSS Tally
After this CSS Tally, I think I am good in creating efficient process. I am not the project manager for this project, so I do not get much credits for coming up with the tallying system. However, I'm still kind of involved in the project. I came up with an assembly line for different sections, as well as, using google doc for the short answers and names for the prize draw. Today is the first time where all of us come together and tally in an assembly line. It is not as efficient as I wanted to be as the project manager was not good in enforcing the system where each person is in charge of one section... or two people for one larger part (short answers part).
Oh well, as long as we get the job done and I know that I am capable :)
ct.
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