CFR Food Runners Deliver “Stay Put Packs” to Manna Participants

As we expand CFR’s capabilities to deliver food to Manna’s participants who cannot or should not be out during COVID-19, we are thrilled and a bit overwhelmed by the number of people who have signed up to be CFR volunteer food runners! We are grateful for our new CFR food runners for stepping up during this difficult time, and for the continued support of our seasoned CFR runners.

Here’s a quick overview of our new food runs to individuals:

• Food runners adhere to our COVID-19 safety protocols. You can find them here.
• Manna has made sealed, pre-packed boxes of shelf-stable foods called, Stay Put Packs. Each box weighs about 30 lbs. and should last a person 7-10 days.
• We have the potential to reach around 2,000 Manna food recipient participants through this program.
• To maximize your efforts and not waste gas, we will cluster some of the food runs so that you will deliver to a few residents within a defined geographic area whenever possible.
• Food runners will pick the boxes up from one of two Manna locations, based on delivery location:
  • Manna Warehouse: 9311 Gaither Rd. Gaithersburg
  • Manna Marketplace: 12301 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring

Stay Put Packs contain shelf-stable food and weigh about 30 lbs.

Here are the steps for accepting and completing food runs to individuals:

• You will receive email notices about available food runs. Each notice will be for either a single delivery or a cluster of a few food runs. If you do not receive email notices, check your ChowMatch account. Login to ChowMatch. Click on Volunteer dropdown menu>Volunteer Account>User Account. Scroll down to Notifications and check Daily and Last minute email/text notification boxes.
• Please carefully review all the information, including date, time, location(s), number of locations and minimum vehicle size before accepting the food run.
• If you can accept the requirements of the run, feel free to accept it. Once the run is claimed, other volunteers will be blocked so we don’t have duplicate efforts.
• Please be patient if you don’t get to do a run right away! We will be ramping up in the coming weeks.
• You will receive a confirmation email with the address details of each delivery, and contact information of the donor (you’ll see Manna listed with my contact info) and the Manna participant’s name and phone number.

We will gradually scale up deliveries to Manna participants who cannot or should not pick up food.

• On the day of the food run, please
  • ensure that you can follow all of the safety requirements (single-use gloves and/or hand sanitizer, and face covering). 
  • remember to take the location information, your cell phone, and a clean auto. This is shelf-stable food, so you do not need any special handling materials.
  • call each of the Manna participants on your list and give them your estimated time frame for delivery: “Your box will be delivered between xx and xx” and reiterate where you will drop the box according to the notes specified.
• Drive to the designated Manna location for pick up—either in Gaithersburg or Silver Spring. Each Manna location will place all the boxes in a POD in the parking lot. You will self-serve, taking the number of listed boxes on your sheet.
• Upon leaving Manna, you may want to use ChowMatch’s routing feature (with Google Maps) to follow the best route to each of your destinations accounting for real time traffic conditions. Login to your ChowMatch account on your phone>Volunteer>My Active Food Runs>click Route for current day. Choose Dropoff. For Start, choose “current”. Choose all the locations in your cluster for that day. For End, choose: House.
• Remember, this is a no-contact delivery for your and the Manna participant’s safety. Drop where instructed and go. You may arrange to wait until you get buzzed into an apartment building and deliver to an apartment door, but do not go in or have contact with the participant.
• After you have completed all the food runs, please complete status of each location in ChowMatch. Login to your ChowMatch account. Volunteer>My Active or Past Food Runs> click the blue Complete Status button and fill out the form. This replaces the paper Food Run Tracking Form that we previously used (saves time and paper!).
• If you have any questions or issues that come up before, during or after your run, please contact me: Cheryl Kollin, CFR Program Director, cheryl@communityfoodrescue.org 240-268-2502.

CFR Food Runs from Donor businesses to Food Assistance Organizations

CFR Food Runners will also receive email notices for our typical food runs– from donor food businesses to non-profit food assistance agencies. Note whether these are one-time runs or regular (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly etc.) runs. You may accept regular runs either one time, or if you can, accept on an on-going basis. Food runners must adhere to our COVID-19 safety protocols. You can find them here.

Thanks so much for being a CFR food runner so that together we can feed more and waste less!