Ordering

Tamara, Marion and I all have a hand in keeping the FDC stocked with good food. 

Tamara likes to keep products in stock that are favorites – hers and members’. She reaches out to Just Soap, Bee Boys Honey, Bee Balm and a bunch of others fairly regularly to be sure we don’t run short on product. 

Marion designs the cheese and bread shares. We still purchase from some of the dairies we worked with from almost the inception of the cheese share. The planning of the cheese share starts at the beginning of the season – sending emails to find out the status of the herd, any price increases or learn of new products. The share attempts to strike a balance between lower-cost every-day cheeses and more complex-flavored higher-cost cheeses. Ideally the dairies and the schedule are set in advance, but unforeseen factors can lead to last minute changes. #neverdull

How far in advance do we plan the season? Some of the food we receive is planned for years, as mentioned last week – King, Brooksby Farm’s manager, and I talked about honeydew melons several years ago. Often we are reaching out seasonally. In early June we ask about cherries, in late June we ask about blueberries, and so on. Today I asked about Asian pears.

How far in advance do we place orders? As above, it depends on the item. We placed our order for a dried herb for the December share a month ago, but the idea was mentioned last December. Sometimes we are texting a grower the morning of to help us make up another farm’s shortage. We have been saved many mornings by growers who happen to be able to harvest and/or pack up what we need on the fly. 

On a weekly basis, we call around on a Friday to have an idea about the share the coming week. We open stores that night. We place orders Tuesday nightand Wednesday morning.

Our orders are either:

• harvested, washed and packed Wednesday (most veggie crops)
• packed from the cooler on Wednesday (things like watermelon or cabbage where the farm may do a giant harvest and sell the crop the following few weeks)
• packed from the packing house Wednesday or Thursday morning (like tomatoes that are the same as above, but not in a cooler)
• picked and packed Thursday morning – berries, corn, sometimes tomatoes.

We are fortunate to work with great farm partners. We help each other out to bring good food to the people!

Julie

By Julie Pottier-Brown, Operations Manager

I heard years ago that when the lovely bakery that is A&J King in Salem wanted to add a new cookie to its line-up it took a year to figure out how to fit the new item into the production line. This was before their expansion to the second/wholesale Boston Street location. I imagine that the mixing, proofing, baking, packaging, etc. of many different breads is a tight daily/overnight schedule.

I relay this story as I think about flow; about how our goods get from the farm to us, from us to you and how everything flows to the depots and back. A volunteer last week was surprised that all of the food for the entire coop was at the Marblehead location where we were portioning out the special orders and putting each depot’s items on the correct pallet to be loaded onto the correct truck.

We rent 2 trucks every depot day. One, driven by Adriaan “Skip” Schippers, goes to Western Massachusetts. He is hauling the watermelons, most of the tomatoes, leeks, and many of our special orders today. The other truck, driven by Dennis Cowley, stays closer to home and goes to Beverly, Gloucester, Peabody, Rockport, and occasionally New Hampshire. He will bring us tomatoes and peaches today. Once the trucks are full, Skip comes to the Marblehead depot and starts the unload around 12:30 – 1pm. Dennis goes to the Marblehead office where we have a refrigerator, freezer and what we lovingly refer to as ”Cooler Mountain”. Dennis picks up the coolers for eggs, cheese, mushrooms, extras for sale, pasta, frozen special orders. He loads the bread which was delivered there in the wee hours, split by location by Ann Sabin, as well as the general store items. When both trucks are at the Marblehead depot, the goods on each truck that belong in Marblehead come off, and the goods that need to go to the Melrose and Salem locations are loaded onto their respective trucks.

We have a color coding system. Marblehead is red, Melrose is blue, and Salem is green. Special order stickers are those colors, the tape on the cheese, egg or mushroom coolers are those colors, and the zip ties on the clips on the green and yellow crates from Riverland farm are those colors (though Salems’ zip ties are clear and not green – it just worked out that way when we first designed the system). The idea is that we can see the colors as they get loaded onto the trucks (or almost left behind) and we can fix mistakes before – or as – they are happening.

The next time you are picking up your share, notice the colored zip ties on the clips holding up the chalkboard signs. Notice the veggie bins, wax boxes, berry flats, paper bread bags, coolers for all the things. These get sent out to each depot, and packed away in the shed at end of night. Then what?

Part two next week…

Thanks for supporting local, and choosing to do so with the Farm Direct Coop.

Julie