Food shelf leader works to provide comparable experience at multiple sites, regardless of size and location
Kelly Erp oversees four different food shelves as part of her role with Prairie Five Community Action.
As she works to build consistency between the sites, she relies on FFEN’s Food Sourcing Analysis Report and Consultation to guide her purchasing.
“FFEN breaks it down and provides insight on where we can cut back in our purchasing, where we should spend more and where we could prioritize differently,” Erp said.
Erp serves as the outreach director for the Canby Food Shelf which serves Yellow Medicine County, the Swift County Food Shelf located in Benson, the Chippewa County Food Shelf in Montevideo and the Big Stone Lake Area Food Shelf in Ortonville which serves Big Stone County. While three of the sites offer a choice model of shopping for food, the Montevideo site offers pre-made boxes and plans to move to a client choice model when they get into a new building in 2025.
Each site, she said, is run by one or two staff people and a number of volunteers. The sites vary in the number of households they serve each month. Canby is the smallest, serving 35 and the Montevideo site is the largest, serving 225.
“FFEN breaks it down and provides insight on where we can cut back in our purchasing, where we should spend more and where we could prioritize differently.”
Kelly Erp, outreach director prairie five community action
Regardless of size and location, Erp said, she wants people to receive a comparable experience. The reports from FFEN revealed the cost per individual at the sites varied greatly, one being four times more than another site. Shoring those numbers up, she said, is a priority and the report guides her on which food categories to maintain and which to scale back or increase.
“It’s helping our bottom dollar, we’re able to stretch more as we’re cutting back on the categories we don’t need,” she said.
Because of the data that shows what foods shoppers want most, and a look at the categories of food they were spending money on, Erp said they have eliminated boxed meals to instead provide more fresh food.
The numbers, along with the medians available in the report, guide her food ordering.
With the help of a customized Food Sourcing
Analysis Report and Consultation, Prairie Five:
* Identifies inequities in the amount of money the food shelves were spending per individual.
* Highlights areas where the food shelf could spend more, where they could reduce and where they could make different choices that impact the budget.
* Uses data to explain why it’s important to eliminate spending on boxed meals and opt instead to provide fresh food.
* Increases the amount of fresh food on the shelves.
* Spurs staff to take better advantage of TEFAP dollars to augment their food sourcing.
“We try to get up to that statewide benchmark (for fresh food), it’s at least something to go off of,” she said.
Erp said the shift can be difficult for people who have volunteered or worked at the food shelf for a long time because what they used to order just is not what they plan to order moving forward.
However, she said, the reports identified that at certain sites the food shelves could take better advantage of TEFAP dollars and by doing that, with guidance from FFEN, they have been able to expand some of their food offerings.
“We’re able to supply more,” she said. “Your dollar can only go so far, but we used to only provide three kinds of vegetables and now we can supply four or five. TEFAP has been wonderful and we’re able to hit all the categories and stock it a little longer.”
Now, she said food shelf directors tag team on text messaging, letting one another know when something is available for ordering, adding to supplies for all the sites. Having more TEFAP food coming into the site, she said, has freed up some dollars to purchase foods that are culturally relevant to shoppers.
Additionally, she said, her sites have used the reports to explain to donors what the demand looks like at the food shelf.
“I love the report, I love it when it comes out,” Erp said. “Before, it was do what you want and put what you want on the shelves. Now it’s what’s the healthiest option we can give out.”
