FFEN’s Strategic Food Sourcing Service
Get the data you need to strengthen your food shelf. FFEN’s individualized six month “health check” provides key insights to help you make informed decisions and adapt to evolving community needs. See a breakdown of food categories by cost and weight to evaluate the sustainability of your purchasing strategy and its impact. With experience supporting hundreds of food shelves each year, FFEN translates data into actionable best practices to help you serve your community more effectively.
Jan – June 2026 Food Sourcing Data
This data set includes 250 food shelf sites across Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and eastern North Dakota. Insights from the data are linked below including comparisons to prior timeframe.
Current Food Sourcing Environment
Food sourcing is a crucial operational process for food shelves. It can have significant implications on an organization’s budget and the types of food offered to the community. Because the food sourcing environment is constantly changing, we encourage food shelf leaders to stay up to date on trends that impact their work.
Strategic Food Sourcing in Action
Resources and food shelf stories related to Strategic Food Sourcing are found below for easy reference alongside more specific timeline data sets.
July – Dec 2025 Food Sourcing Data
This data set includes 238 food shelf sites across Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and eastern North Dakota. Insights from the data are linked below including comparisons to prior timeframe.
Jan – June 2025 Food Sourcing Data
This data set includes 184 food shelf sites across Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and eastern North Dakota. Insights from the data are linked below including comparisons to prior timeframe.
July – Dec 2024 Food Sourcing Data
This data set includes 147 food shelf sites across Minnesota and western Wisconsin that participated in the first round of Strategic Food Sourcing Reports and Consultations. Insights from the data are linked below.