Normally when a person goes to a food pantry, they are shown a list of available foods and asked to check off their preferences. Then the list is taken and bags or boxes of filled. It’s worked for a long time, so why change it. Right? The problem is that people would get the food they or their family didn’t like and wouldn’t eat. They would give the food away or worse, leave it on their shelf until it went out of date and needed to be thrown away.
Earlier this year, we instituted self-shopping. Using their shopping list that tells them what their limits are, our people come in to shop the shelves themselves. This allows them to pick what they like and the brands they like.
By using this process, we also found that people have time to think about what they have at home and only take what they need instead of getting what they don’t want.
In retrospect, this was a good change for everyone concerned. It also gives us time to restock the shelves while people are shopping. Also, to make shopping more comfortable for people with children, we created a kids playroom. Our people were so happy with the idea, about 95% of the items in the playroom were donated by the people that come in to get food. Win Win all around!