A Day in the Life at the Food Connects Food Hub - Part II: The Warehouse

By Kristen Thompson

Our Food Hub Warehouse Specialist extraordinaire, Raymond Johnston, finds me in the staff kitchen at the end of my lunch break. I’m going to shadow Raymond as he prepares for tomorrow’s deliveries. 

Raymond picks up a stack of printed stickers with customers’ orders in the warehouse, checking for any missing stickers or mistakes by comparing them to the invoices. Then, we walk over to Cooler 1, which is, unsurprisingly, pretty chilly. 

(Left to right) Food Hub Warehouse Specialist Raymond Johnston and Marketing Coordinator Kristen Thompson are your guides on this “day in the life” doing picking, sorting, and staging in the Food Connects Food Hub warehouse.

This afternoon we’re preparing orders for Friday morning deliveries, which often include stops in the Brattleboro area and up towards Rutland. Some of the customers we’re preparing orders for today include Loaves & Fishes, The Putney Town School District, and Mountain Energy Market.

I’m eager to keep my feet moving and follow Raymond around the warehouse as he picks, sorts, and then stages the orders.

So, what is picking? Picking is the first stage of organizing orders. Raymond and the other Warehouse Staff take printed stickers of ordered items and sticker products in our warehouse. 

A few decisions go into what inventory items Raymond picks. First, of course, only safe food in good condition is kept for delivery. He picks the items with earlier sell dates first so they can make it to our customers before they’re too old to sell.

While Raymond is busy picking, I ask him about his journey to Food Connects. Raymond tells me he’s been working in food distribution for years, but he didn’t always feel like the distributors he worked for supported the sustainable and ethical food system he wanted to help build.

“In the training videos [for my previous employer], they were picking up from small local farmers and producers. By the time I was working with them, they’d gotten too big for that kind of work. I thought, ‘I wish I were doing that.’” 

Raymond reads over the inventories for a delivery.

At Food Connects, Raymond finally gets to support local farmers and producers. He feels good about the work he does. And with the knowledge and experience he brings from his years working for larger distributors, Raymond has brought important insights to our warehouse operations.

Raymond has done a lot of work to improve the warehouse’s internal recordkeeping and organizational processes.

“If Scott [our Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator] and I had to leave suddenly and someone had to walk into the warehouse and pick up where we left off, you want them to be able to see what has been done and what to do next.”

One of the ways the warehouse team keeps organized is by labeling items consistently during the picking process. On bagged products, like bulk beets, carrots, and potatoes, we put the stickers next to the labels producers have stuck onto the bags with general product information. We attach stickers to the short end of the boxes on boxed products. These little details save the team time later in the process, whether they’re sorting products or pulling them out of a delivery truck.

Raymond also goes over the products that aren’t in Cooler 1 with a highlighter on the invoices. We come back to those items at the end.

When we’ve stickered all the items in Cooler 1, we walk over to Cooler 2, where we have Basin Farm potatoes stored in an area kept cool but not cold—the ideal conditions for potato storage. These items come back to Cooler 1, where we’re ready to start sorting.

Raymond brings potatoes to Cooler 1 for sorting.

To sort, we begin to pull out and group stickered products by type on a big set of pallets. Emma Bliss, Food Hub Operations Coordinator, joins us in the sorting process and sets up a Bluetooth speaker with music.

Raymond sets out pallets and sorts stickered products.

Some of the items we’re sorting are the same items Emma and I picked up from producers earlier that day on the Westminster Pick-ups Route. Harlow Farm carrots are piling up on the pallets. Other items have been waiting in inventory in the warehouse, like the Basin Farm potatoes.

Once we’ve pulled and sorted all the items, it’s time for the final and most complicated step in the process—staging.

Deliveries are staged on pallets, organized by which route and, therefore, which vehicle the team will load them into.

A pallet of sorted produce in Cooler 1.

Staging is a bit counterintuitive if, like me, you’ve never thought about the logistics of unloading a delivery truck before. Raymond attempts to explain the logic of how we stage at Food Connects, and I do my best to follow.

“We actually sort in the opposite order of the delivery list so that the last stops will be in the very front of the truck, and the first stops will be in the back. It makes it easier for the drivers to unload.”

A pallet of staged products ready to be loaded onto a delivery truck.

So, each pallet is organized in the opposite order that deliveries will be unloaded. Each pallet has a clipboard with an invoice placed on top, so drivers know what they’re looking at when they pick up the pallets in the morning. The organization gets quite detailed here. Raymond fills out a form with information about which deliveries are on the left or right side of the pallet to make it easier for drivers to find them once they’re loaded into the truck. Most vehicles will have multiple pallets, so he writes numbers on the invoices that indicate where to pack each pallet in the truck.

What Raymond and his teammates do in the warehouse is all about making it as easy as possible for the next person in the process to shepherd our food towards its final destination successfully.

At the end of my time shadowing Raymond, I’ve concluded that the warehouse is where a lot of the hidden food distribution magic happens. Most people in our supply chain won’t ever see inside this process, but the efficiency and accuracy of our deliveries are all dependent on diligent and transparent warehouse operations. Moreover, the warehouse is where our food has a home until it’s ready to be delivered. The warehouse team keeps our food in fresh and delicious condition and ensures only safe, high-quality food ends up in our delivery trucks.

I’ve had an eye-opening look into the Food Connects Food Hub’s daily operations, with still more to come! Next week, I’m driving with Tracy Lake on our Monadnock Delivery Route, where I’ll see how our local and regional food finally makes it to our customers.

Meet Our New Food Hub Warehouse Specialist—Raymond Johnston

Food Connects is excited to welcome Raymond Johnston to the Food Hub team as Food Connects’ Warehouse Specialist. Though not on the road often, Raymond will play a key role in distribution for our Food Hub. In this new position, Raymond will work to increase efficiencies in our Food Hub’s warehouse, maintain and oversee systems and regulatory compliance, and take on the daunting tasks of inventory management.

Raymond joined the Food Connects team in late July and has spent years in the food industry, primarily in warehouse distribution.

Meet Raymond today!

What interested you most about Food Connects and why are you excited to start working here?

What interested me most about Food Connects is its strong and growing presence as a key player in the supply chain of New England’s local food system. I am excited to start working at Food Connects to leverage my corporate sales experience and passion for philanthropy and community service to drive sustained growth and distribution of the Food Hub.

What sparked your interest in Food Connects and why are you excited to be here?

My partner let me know there was an opening and I was eager to apply. I had been aware of Food Connects having utilized the Food Hub myself in the past and was excited to be part of an organization making a positive change.

Why is the local food movement important to you?

I think it's important for people, in general, to know where their food comes from, and to at least think about how it gets to them. The less stuff in general, but perhaps food especially, we ship long distances across the country or around the planet the better we'll all be.

What do you see for the future of Food Connects and what you will do here? What are your hopes and dreams for this position?

I would love for organizations like Food Connects to become more and more about how food gets distributed, instead of long-distance distribution across the continent. My hope is to make the Food Hub as efficient and streamlined as possible so we can serve larger orders and customers seamlessly in order to make that a reality in our local market

How will your previous food systems work impact your work at Food Connects?

I'm hoping my knowledge of how larger operations work will help me realize the steps we need to take to scale up the Food Hub without impacting the great service we provide. I'll also be keeping in mind the frustrations and inefficiencies of the larger distributors I've worked for in order to make sure we don't fall into those same pitfalls.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I like to spend my time outdoors, usually relaxing but oftentimes doing some of the never-ending upkeep on our small chicken coop. I always enjoy hiking in whatever woods I can find which previous positions I've held didn't really allow the time or energy for so that's something else positive which may come from this position! Most of my free time is definitely spent around the home though with my family.

What is your favorite or least favorite food?

My favorite food is lasagna, and I'll eat almost anything, so it's kind of hard to think of a least favorite.

If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would you choose?

Joe Biden—but only to try and executive order some decent policies into place given the chance, not really a position I'd get gratification from experiencing. For that I'd probably pick someone from a different culture entirely, as different from me as possible, but probably no-one famous or known. Guess I'd spin a wheel!

What is an experience you've always wanted to try?

Spinning that "trade places" wheel sounds pretty appealing right now