Is this the future of food banks? | About That

You're at a

food

bank, you're standing in line and you're tired, it's

food

drive day. I'm in line right now. I came a little early because if you don't come early, you'll be here a lot longer. necessary they give you a box you open it because you are going to feed your family with what's inside but you didn't choose what's inside and maybe that rue at the bottom you don't even know what it tastes like no matter how To prepare one in a meal too we got some rock fish fillets that I've never worked with before, but I'm going to learn, I'm going to discover something that I always do, so that's one type of food bank, but here's another one conceptually. it's the closest thing to a supermarket you'll find everything is on display it's open 5 days a week except here the food is free you go in you fill your cart you leave you come back in two weeks and do it again you make the decisions you never leave by hand Empty You Never Pay Anything When I read about

this

novel approach to food

banks

, I immediately had questions like: can someone just show up and grab something?

How can the food bank afford

this

? Does this business model even work? All

banks

suffer from the same problem: money, money, it's the reason they never have enough space, it's the reason they are always desperate for volunteers, it's the reason they focus on efficiency, they get food in bulk, they get them out the door, food banks are generally run by volunteers and in many, many places, especially now that we are getting reports that the demand for assistance is far behind the Oat Strip supply. I mean, they're just working flat out to provide people with what they have, predetermining what everyone's going to get, it gives the food banks complete control, but there are some problems with that.

I may already feel helpless having to rely on a food bank in the first place. Don't tell me what to eat besides. They gave me four of these, they all expired 2 and a half months ago. A second problem arises from this: if I receive something I don't want, sometimes I may not use it in our efforts to make sure we are giving you a great product and a complete product. We're giving people things that I just uh don't want to use and when it comes to waste, if I run a food bank, let's say, how would I even know what's used and what's thrown away, as my clients might tell me?

I don't like rude Andrew, why do you? I always give so many badasses, but beyond that, it's not like I'm watching people at home to see what gets used and what gets wasted, plus I'm busy, I can barely find enough volunteers on a regular basis to keep my doors open because The volunteer work itself can be quite tedious. Two main volunteer jobs are the lifeblood of a basket model food bank. You are the case picker or case distributor. Both jobs are exactly what they sound like: One person spending hours manually filling hundreds of identical boxes with the same foods over and over again while Person B handles the customer side, matching boxes with names on a list and handing them out.

The point is that with all the volunteer opportunities that exist, these roles are not always easy to fill, it is really a challenge for the volunteer in those settings to balance supply and demand while trying to implement some quality control, so let's look at a different way to make those representations of what a different type of food bank that I showed you at the beginning would look like. These are not just conceptual drawings, it is a real space that will open very soon in Cota. We're excited but also a little nervous, like when you try to do something new and it's a big change, there are a lot of them.

It takes a lot of planning and a lot of coordination, but we are very excited about the potential impact we can have. The Regina Food Bank purchased the building. It will be the first nationally on this scale and will operate much like a pick-your-own grocery store. ground beef or you can pick chicken you can pick carrots or you can pick potatoes you can pick lentils or you can pick oats now you still need to answer some basic questions about your income your need the size of your family and shopping is by appointment then once you are Inside, you have an allocation of how many things you can carry.

They estimate that each family leaves with about $200 worth of goods twice a month, that's not necessarily more or less than usual, it's just distributed differently and this is recreated. The supermarket experience is very intentional, it's about giving autonomy, giving someone the dignity of being able to choose their own meals and the final financial side of that no one is forced to take something they don't want or need and that's a real challenge for them because it creates a burden of what are they going to do with it and also that burden of saying "well, I'm using this, I'm taking this resource and someone else can't, so we want to eliminate that and give it that empowerment and here's the best part when I put all those rue on the shelves in my store and no one takes them.

I can immediately see that I need to stop buying them. I can gauge what is popular and what is left behind. Customers might be ed to try new things. foods they're really interested in, they can more easily compare allergy issues or dietary needs, and all those volunteers you had working in the back room packing boxes are now out helping customers with their shopping, helping with meal planning, or just helping out. sounds like something that is quite attractive to people because it allows them to really donate their time to something where they can see the impact and have that interaction with the people we serve sounds great, well let's stay calm because it's not easy to develop a system like this one that really works, inventory management is so much more.

The dynamic demands of volunteers are different. The basic execution of what a food bank does is very different and we know this because we spoke to someone who has been operating this model for about 9 years. My name is Sarah Watson and I are the Director of Community Engagement at North York Harvest Food Bank. I contacted Sarah because I came across this article from 2015 about how North York Harvest Food Bank was increasingly in favor of a customer choice model being in control of their food feels great, they wrote what was really clear to us , that choice was a key piece of what our participants were looking for.

The challenge was that changing the model did not change the amount of food available, so they had to come up with a system. that worked, so we have all the foods set up in the different sections and then depending on how many people are in a household, they can choose a certain number of items from that section, they will be, you know, a vegetable section and they will choose the vegetables The ones that best meet your family's needs will be rice and grains and they will go beyond them so that there are these built-in limits on how people can buy.

The trick was being able to give customers meaningful choices, you know Sarah really was. sensible when she spoke to us told us how difficult it has been to store peels, never mind maintaining a rich selection for clients to choose from and a big limitation for food banks who want to consider that the choice model is the space for programs that we run directly we were able to have shelving and dedicated space and cold storage and rack storage, but some of our programs that we partner with don't have permanent space. But at the end of the day, she said, look at the number of options. what you give can fit into any space you have and ultimately it's about meeting people's needs.

Still, I wanted to know if this model was really changing the results because the numbers seem to keep rising out of control regardless of what system the food banks use. Like every year, Canada's food banks compile this report that analyzes the use of food banks across the country. When they looked at just the month of March last year, they recorded almost 2 million views, which was a 32% increase from the previous year. Blame the pandemic. Blame inflation. The point is when you look at a Food Bank choice model, how do you isolate the variables enough to know if the choice model is the best?

The closest thing I could find was an 18-month study published a few years ago where they looked at 11 food banks in Ottawa, four of which used the choice model, interviewed hundreds of clients at those food banks in the Over the course of those 18 months and they were asked a series of questions to determine how unsafe they were with food, they felt the results: a small decrease in feelings. of food insecurity around 05 least least insecure on a 10 point scale on average, that's kind of blue. All banks in Canada are working to increase the level of choice they provide to the people they serve.

We just feel like this is a big step forward. As far as we know, this will be the largest in Canada on day one and we only hope to grow from there, so the choice model is the

future

of food banks. Well, one thing we haven't talked about is whether this is the most efficient way to get people the food they need. You know, with the old system you just gave people a box and they left. They are now scheduling appointments. You're giving people time to buy. Do you know that food banks will be able to maintain.

To cope with the high demand, I biked past a food bank in my neighborhood on Saturday, the line was maybe three blocks long and under those circumstances no one can afford to bring people in one at a time and walk them around. the room and tell them, you know, pick three. things from there, what would you like here to do this on a large scale? As I mentioned, they also need a lot of space. The Regina Food Bank got millions of dollars in donations to pay for its new operation, but the payoff for giving clients more The options according to those who have made the switch are incalculable: Regina Food Bank will open its community center powered by options sometime this summer.