It’s early March of 2022, and after a long hiatus during the height of COVID-19, the Food Connects Sales Team is finally hitting the road with producers. I meet Beth Lewand, Food Connects Food Hub Sales Associate, and Linda Rubin, the woman behind Frisky Cow Gelato, at Linda’s house in Keene, NH. We’re driving out to meet potential customers in the Bradford and Southeast New Hampshire service area—one of our Thursday delivery routes.
About a week after following Emma Bliss and Raymond Johnston through the process of picking up orders and staging deliveries for the Food Connects Food Hub, I wander back down the hall from Food Connects’ administrative offices to the Food Hub. It’s around 8:00 AM when I arrive. Long-time Food Hub Driver Tracy Lake is already loading Van 1 with Raymond and Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator Scott Berzofsky.
Today, I’m joining Tracy for the Food Connects Monadnock Delivery Route in New Hampshire. It’s the very end of March, and with the school year still in full swing, we have a busy route ahead.
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.
Stops on this late March Food Hub pick-ups route.
Emma Bliss, Food Hub Operations Coordinator and sometimes driver for Food Connects, already has Food Hub Van 2 packed when I arrive. I hop into the van, and Emma sets up her music.
“Music is essential,” she tells me.
We’re driving on the Food Connects Westminster Pick-up Route in late March. Emma tells me March and April are the hunger months—when the storage crops are running low, and spring produce isn’t ready to harvest yet. We’re stopping at Harlow Farm today—an especially important producer this time of year because they grow many storage crops. We’ll also be picking up from True North Granola, FinAllie Ferments, Basin Farm, and Green Mountain Orchards. This is one of our shorter pick-up routes, but in the summer, with more fresh produce in season, this route will be much busier with stops at farms like Allen Brothers.
(Left to right) Food Hub Operations Coordinator Emma Bliss and Marketing Coordinator Kristen Thompson are your guides on this “day in the life” doing pickups for the Food Connects Food Hub.
We pull out of the parking lot at Browne Court and head towards downtown Brattleboro. Our first stop is The Cotton Mill, home to several start-ups and small producers, including True North Granola. As we drive through downtown Brattleboro, I ask Emma about the Food Hub’s business model as an entrepreneurial non-profit.
“We really prioritize the farmers and producers,” she explains.
At The Cotton Mill, we park the van by the main loading dock and head inside. Across from Tavernier Chocolates, we find the door to Truth North Granola’s facility and knock. One of the True North Granola Team members brings our order out to us. We can carry this week’s order in one trip, but orders vary from week to week.
We thank them and head out to the van, where it’s starting to drizzle.
Emma drives Food Hub Van 2 through downtown Brattleboro.
Back on the road, I ask Emma whether there are ever any deliveries on this route. We do have a Westminster delivery route, but as Emma explains, “it’s logistically complicated to do pick-ups and deliveries together, so we try to do them separately.” Some farms, such as Scott Farm, are on our delivery and pickup routes, Emma tells me. It’s exciting to see partners participating as both producers and customers in our food system network.
This route usually has many Just-In-Time pickups, meaning we pick up fresh produce to fill customer orders we received that week—saving on food waste and ensuring fresher produce for our customers. Food Hub employees have told me, “It’s more work, but it’s worth it to provide the freshest, highest quality produce for our customers.”
Our next stop, FinAllie Ferments, takes us up 91 North to Bellows Falls.
As we pass through downtown Bellows Falls, Emma points out the opera house, where you can get a great deal on movies and snacks, and the thrift shop she likes.
Emma picks up our FinAllie Ferments order.
“If you ever want to plan a day trip in the area, I can give you a full itinerary,” she tells me. Emma grew up in Southern VT, making this tour an introduction to Food Hub pick-ups and the region Food Connects calls home.
As we pass the Bellows Falls Middle School, we start talking about the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union and Farm to School (FTS). FTS is where Food Connects began, and it continues to be a core component of our work, including in our Food Hub.
“Bellows Falls Middle School is a big delivery for us, and they also did a summer food box program for students. It’s really important for students to have proper nutrition. I think people are starting to acknowledge that more than when we were students.”
We arrive at the warehouse where we pick up FinAllie Ferments, and Emma looks up the code to enter the building. We stack the many boxes of Curry Kraut, Black Garlic Kimchi, and more onto the handcart we’ve taken out of the van—where it usually sits seatbelted against the wall.
Part of the art of pick-ups is keeping the products organized by flavor so the team can easily organize the boxes when we arrive back at the warehouse. We put flavors of the same type in stacks together at the front of the van.
Emma picks up our FinAllie Ferments order.
Behind those, we’ll be loading our Just In Time orders from Basin and Harlow Farms. Those pickups take us to Harlow’s barn-turned-warehouse in Westminster, VT. Harlow is holding both our orders from them and Basin. It’s one of those simple but inspiring examples of cooperation among our partners.
Before pulling up to the loading dock, Emma stops the van and gets out to open the back doors. Then we back the rest of the way up to the dock and splash through the muddy road to the barn's side door. We’re the only ones there, but Emma knows the routine. We open two sliding doors and use a pallet lift to carry our pallet of carrots and potatoes to the van.
Emma tells me about the benefits of partnerships with our comparatively larger producers like Harlow.
“They’re a very key central producer for us, making up a lot of our produce for the whole season,” Emma explains, “And they’re glad to have someone distributing locally so they can sell their products locally.”
As we approach Green Mountain Orchards, Emma lets me in on a secret—they have the best cider doughnuts and the nicest people of all time.
Emma brings our Green Mountain Orchards order to the van.
When we arrive, I meet Andrea Darrow, Co-Owner of Green Mountain Orchards, who steps off her elliptical to greet me. She tells us about all the delicious food that people like to come into their store for, which is also, in some ways, a museum—with old cars and farm equipment displayed around the room.
On the road home, we pass one of our customers, the Putney Food Co-op, and Emma offers to stop to pick up snacks. Riding along with Emma on her route, I feel just how close-knit our network of producers and customers is.
Emma says she hears good feedback from the customers she meets.
“The feedback is that we’re very communicative and friendly at all levels [of the organization].”
There’s one more stop today, the Food Connects loading dock, where we’ll see our pick-ups safely to the warehouse. More of the Food Hub Team is ready to help us when we arrive. Scott Berzofsky, Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator, and Raymond Johnston, Food Hub Warehouse Specialist, carry pallets over and begin unloading the van with Emma.
Emma and Scott Berzofsky, Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator, unload Van 2 at the Food Connects Food Hub loading dock.
I’m at the end of my trip shadowing Emma on the Westminster Pick-up Route, and there’s a lot to take in. Even though Emma drives these routes alone, I’m struck by the connections she facilitates and participates in within our community food system. It truly takes the whole team of customers, producers, drivers, warehouse coordinators, and more to build this system of healthy families, thriving farms, and connected communities.
But my day isn’t over. Next, I’ll be shadowing Raymond in the Food Hub warehouse and learning about yet another crucial piece of the local and regional food distribution puzzle. But for now, it’s time for my lunch break. Stay tuned for more!
At Food Connects, we are committed to offering our customers fresh, high-quality, source-identified products. Because we desire to cultivate a transparent value chain, the Food Connects team wants to share with you each week’s sequence of events to offer all our customers access to an array of fresh, regionally sourced products.
To maximize freshness and quality, most of our perishable product is received into our warehouse within 24-48 hours before being delivered to our customers. These products are what we classify as Just-In-Time (JIT). Sometimes the product stays in our warehouse just a few minutes before it goes from the farm field or the bakery to the customer—all on the same day!
Generally, most JIT products are received into our warehouse on Tuesdays for Wednesday and Thursday customer deliveries and received on Thursday for Friday and Monday customer deliveries. Rather than purchasing excess and keeping the product in our warehouse for an extended period, we purchase JIT items “to order” based on customer demand for each given order cycle. In addition to ensuring maximum freshness, this model also helps to reduce food waste. On the other hand, we make sure to keep on hand a readily available supply of all our shelf-stable dry, refrigerated, and frozen products.
Food Connects sources products from 36 JIT producers to fill customer orders every week. The fact that we have not one but two weekly order cycles means that we often receive products into our warehouse from the majority of our JIT producers twice per week.
The national food industry generally does not lift up and promote the names of all the frontline workers. Without those workers, our chain grocery store shelves would not stay filled. In contrast, the Food Connects team knows that collaboration and strong relationships are vital to building a vibrant and healthy community. We want to know who is part of getting your food from the farm to the table every step of the way. We celebrate and thank each of those individuals for helping us bring fresh, regional food to our community.
By Monday at 10:00 AM, John Truncale, Produce Manager at the Brattleboro Food Co-op, places an order including a few cases of red leaf lettuce from Harlow Farm located in Westminster, VT. Our Procurement Specialist, David Paysnick, sends out orders to all our JIT producers by noon that same day, including to Harlow Farm. Then the job passes to the Harlow Farm employees, including Leroy Campbell, Raymond Carridice, and Gerald Berry. Throughout the remainder of that day and into the following Tuesday, they pick, wash, fill, sort, and stage our order of red leaf lettuce in addition to any other fresh veggies that our customers ordered.
On Tuesday, one of our drivers, Bob Blackmer, picks up our order from Harlow Farm and several other JIT producers, including Echo Farm Puddings, Kitchen Garden Farm, and Orchard Hill Breadworks. Once Bob returns to the Food Connects warehouse, members of our operations team, including Scott Berzofsky, Raymond Johnston, and Emma Bliss, receive, sort, and stage orders ready to be delivered to our customers. By Wednesday afternoon, another driver David Pontius delivers the cases of red leaf lettuce to the Brattleboro Food Co-op, ready to be received by their dedicated staff, who will then display the product on their shelves for customers to purchase.
As you can see, it takes a host of people to grow, process, aggregate, distribute, and sell fresh products. Our Just-In-Time distribution model requires significant coordination across every organization and every set of hands to move the product along the value chain.
From an aggregation perspective, we admit that it would be more efficient for Food Connects to buy fresh products in bulk instead of only ordering enough products to fill customer orders for a given week. However, this process would lead us to compromise on one of our core values: doing our best to offer our customers fresh, long-lasting products. At Food Connects, we refuse to jeopardize product quality and are willing to put in the required time and effort to aggregate and distribute fresh, perishable products on a Just-In-Time schedule.
If you know anything about food distribution, you know drivers are absolutely critical to the operation. At Food Connects, our Food Hub drivers are our front-line workers—picking up from the people who make and grow our food and delivering that food to co-ops, schools, hospitals, and more. Five days a week, they are out on the road representing Food Connects and, more importantly, our values. As the people who are physically delivering New England food to New England customers, they are indispensable in achieving New England's 30-by-30 Vison. We are grateful for the critical part they play in building a better food system.
So, what is it like to work for an entrepreneurial non-profit Food Hub? And who are the drivers that make our work possible? Meet two members of our driving team, Elisa and Tracy. Their hard work and dedication over the past few years has significantly fostered and shaped the growth of our Food Hub.
Elisa and Tracy have both been with our team for quite a while and have seen us through some major transitions. Fun fact: Tracy has technically been with us for more than 5 ½ years—he worked for the Windham Farm & Food Network (WFF) (which eventually became Food Connects) while he was at Harlow Farm in Westminster, VT.
What is your professional background?
Elisa (E): I started in landscape architecture (residential in CA) and got into edible landscaping, which ultimately helped me transition into farming and urban farming.
Tracy (T): I worked for Paul Harlow, at Harlow Farm, for a while. My daughter is a farmer too—Sweetland Farm in Norwich, VT!
Are you doing other work outside of Food Connects? How do you split your time?
E: Farming takes up a lot of my time outside of Food Connects. I enjoy pickup sports like soccer, ultimate frisbee, and basketball, and also play Settlers of Catan.
T: I’m not doing other work outside of Food Connects. When I’m not driving, I like to cross-country ski and maintain.
Why did you choose Food Connects?
E: I had heard lots of good things on the street about working here. When I started working at Food Connects, I was new to the Brattleboro area. This was an opportunity to get to know people and Windham County—I got to know the roads and culture a little bit more. I also have done a lot of networking with producers and wholesale buyers for my farm.
T: My job melded from one to the other. I went to high school with Paul Harlow and was loyal to Paul and his farm. As I did more and more work for WFF, I even insisted on working for Paul in title only. But eventually, it made sense to be a member of the Food Connects team and I switched. There are good people all the way around, on the staff, on the farms, and on the receiving end.
What do you like about your job? What is hard about it?
E: The hardest part is definitely driving in the dead of winter because of the weather and New England roads—the managers are very reasonable around driving expectations in poor conditions. My favorite thing is that Food Connects is a successful nonprofit as it continues to grow and avoids mission creep—some nonprofits do go beyond their original mission and purposes, and do too much of it. Food Connects has two main enterprises (the Food Hub and our Farm to School Program) and does it better and better each passing season.
T: To reiterate Elisa, winter driving can be tough—but I never feel unsafe. I would have to say that this is probably the most social I’ve been in my entire life—connecting with all the farmers and customers through the region. I like that Food Connects can also be a resource—I can inform my daughter about interesting news and opportunities from other farms.
Have you driven for any other businesses before? If so, how is Food Connects different from a normal driving job?
E: In the past I have driven for farms going to farmers’ markets. It’s similar, but different because when you go to a farmers’ market it is very full when you go and empty when you come back. Plus that it’s just one stop versus constantly stopping to make deliveries. I drove around the San Francisco Bay area which also had a lot more, and often unpredictable, traffic. Here… it might be a cow in the middle of the road and I definitely would rather have that than urban traffic.
What would you tell a potential driver who is looking to work with us? Why should someone want to drive with Food Connects?
E: Good people and good management—the people are really genuine here. It’s also good pay for relatively easy and consistent work that’s reliable. Plus there are great systems in place and good food and discounts on it! If you live in Windham county, it’s close to downtown Brattleboro and centrally located.
T: Good people. Plain and simple.
Any fun stories to share with us about being on the road?
E: I wasn’t joking before. A literal cow crossed the road and I had to wait!
T: It can sometimes be scary with the snowstorms but I grew up around heavy equipment and respect the machinery.
