Improving the experience of using a food bank

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I've NC'd for this.

I run a food bank. We pack food parcels and deliver them (to many, many people) but also ask people who are able to, to collect from us. The model we have is that people come in during one morning a week, and we go along our shelves and ask them if they'd like... whatever item. We buy in a few items (we're grant funded) but most of what we have is supermarket excess, esp fresh produce and dairy. So someone saying yes to everything would get beans, tinned toms, pasta, rice, oats and (this week) toothpaste, 6-7 different types of fruit and veg, oat milk, mince.

We're in a deprived part of town and serve people from this postcode and the neighbouring one (where there isn't other provision), as well as people who are from further afield but where we're really the nearest realistic option. Most of the people we serve are very local.

We ask people to pay £2 towards their shop if they can. This is voluntary.

Our premises is quite small, and I worry about ventilation as the weather turns.

At the moment a queue starts to form outside several hours before (our commercial neighbours grumble a bit but broadly are sympathetic). Most people are probably queuing for 45m to an hour to get in. We don't really have seating - certainly not for everyone, but even for more than 2-3 people. It's just too cramped and crowded.

We serve a person every two minutes from the moment we open our doors to when we close.

We have enough for everyone, so arriving early doesn't give an advantage in terms of what's on offer.

We have children's books and toys on offer if people are coming along with their little ones.

I can't really ask my incredibly dedicated volunteers to stay longer / come in another day, they're already giving up so much of their time.

We don't really have capacity to do more deliveries, because that also relies on volunteers.

I wonder about some sort of ticketing system, but then I think we'll still have people hanging around waiting for their number to be called.

We at some point tried to let people help themselves to one of each item and it was an unmitigated disaster - some people were just tipping whole containers of things into their wheely bags.

I'm not happy with the experience we're offering, basically. The whole point of our kind of setup is that there is dignity in people choosing what they'd like for themselves. But if you have to queue for an hour and occasionally get into a bunfight with a queue jumper (it's been known to happen) a lot of that dignity vanishes.

How would you do it, if you were me? Yes I have trustees etc to speak to but I'm interested in others' opinions.

But I agree that maybe longer opening hours and more volunteers is the more realistic thing you can do.
Try getting an interview slot with local radio, or post on FB in the most respected group in the area. Reach other to other community groups eg Churches or schools/colleges and try and recruit through them.

I run a food bank too. We send a pre-printed Google form out to our clients every week, by email. They tick the items they would like (the number allowed from each section depends on the size of the family) & then send it back to us, & the form automatically populates a spreadsheet. Our volunteers use this to pre-pack the clients’ bags before they come in… Happy to discuss further if you would like?

I have a question as someone who ask volunteers as a food bank, I would say a large majority of our customers won’t have access to computers, or are not computer literate, how do you get round that?

Or is your email form used alongside a ‘just turn up’ policy?

No, we assign them a ‘buddy’ - a volunteer who is sent the form instead of the client, and then rings the client to go through the form with them. They then submit the form on their behalf

Most people who come to our food banks have smartphones with Internet access they message our social media I imagine a lot of people manage a Gmail.

This is a great idea.

Thank you - it works really well 👍🏼

This is really interesting @peonyprincess , thank you for replying! It may be one for a conversation off the board but are your stocks mainly donations from the public (ie do you know reliably what you'll have to offer people, and is it broadly the same week on week)?

Ours is hugely variable. It's now Sunday - our fridges are empty. Tomorrow we'll receive a truckload of stuff (literally), with no consistency from one week to the next. Most of it about to expire. Tues/Weds people call in to collect. So a form like you're describing would need to be put together and sent out to people on a Monday afternoon, with a good rate of return (or people called by buddies) by end Tuesday, if we were to have a shot of compiling individual bags before Wednesday. Sounds very tight!

I have been thinking about this more OP, and I wonder if it would be worthwhile designing a really short suvery - some that you can have printed in a box for people to take away and a QR code, encouraging them to fill it out online if they can. That way you could ask Your customers what they do and don't care about, what bothers them/would make it better?

It could be something like:

When you visit rank the importance of the following to you, with 1 being the most important:

Choice of food
Volume of food
Friendly staff
Accessing additional information
Opening hours (outside working hours)
Opening hours (inside working hours)
Speed of visit (from arriving to leaving)
Accessing other services

What is your favourite feature/one thing you would you most like to keep the same about enterprise name here?

If you could change one thing about enterprise name here what would it be?

Pre booked slots would help even out the people attending.

Maybe you're just doing rthe best you can?

I know people are saying remove the choice element but it's depressing to receive a parcel of stuff you can't eat/don't like. Especially when you know its only chance that you got pineapple you're allergic to instead of peaches that you love etc.

That's an interesting approach @Augend23 . We actually have a work placement bod coming in soon who is an anthropology student - might be a good exercise for them to do.

Few other ideas here that I want to run by our volunteers too.

we have a lot of donations from the public, but we also raise money to buy the items on our form so that they are always in stock. We also buy fresh chicken, mince, sausages, cheese & eggs to order as well. We are open 5 times a week - and each client is assigned a particular session- forms for our Tuesday clients go out on a Thursday morning for the following week, and the forms for the Thursday & Friday clients go out the previous weekend. This enables our volunteer buyers us to meet Click & Collect deadlines at Tesco, to collect the night before the session and deliver to our premises. The volunteers will then arrive the next morning half an hour before the clients arrive, to pack their bags

Than you for all the work OP and PP do at food banks, can someone explain to be how the heat banks are going to work? It’s not like food that you can take with you and use.

I get how it would help someone to cut down on bill cost a similar way to many of us who will probably choose to go into the office rather than heat our homes during the day, but for those who go back to freezing homes will it benefit them? Unless you live very close to one the act of going out in the winter weather could be more dangerous.

I’m not sure @Notepadfrog . The ones near me offer a warm place to stay during the day, sometimes with tea or soup etc. I suppose they cut down on home heating costs for those who can’t afford it, but only while they are at the warm bank.

Like most food banks we’re trying to link up with advice about energy efficiency, benefits, suitable grants etc. I spent last week writing a grant which would see us purchasing about 100 Oodie type things for our customers.

Would it be quicker if people waiting ticked off what they wanted and volunteers packed the items from the list?