Food Distribution

We have developed food distribution software for two groups of farmers who distribute their food to groups of customers, and we are now working with a three more similar-but-different groups.

The first food group was the Southeast Minnesota Food Network (SMFN). The second was the Producers and Buyers Co-op of Eau Claire, Wisconsin (PBC). The third will be a new co-op in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

The first two groups work differently in some ways. The main differences include:

• Membership: Only the farmers are members of SMFN. PBC includes farmers, distributors and customers as members, and all members meet to negotiate prices.
• Distribution: SMFN does their own distribution, using their own warehouse, truck and staff. PBC uses separate distributors, although those distributors are members of the co-op.
• Ordering: SMFN customers order by product, and the SMFN staff decides which lots go to which orders during the delivery process. PBC customers order by lot: that is, lots are assigned to orders when the customer places the order.
• Processing: SMFN includes meat processing in the price of the delivered cuts of meat, which goes to the meat processor, and the processor pays the farmer. PBC charges customers separately for the meat and the processing. The meat price goes to the farmer, the processing cost goes to the processor.

The third group is a "multi-stakeholder cooperative" like PBC, but it will have other food networks as suppliers as well as single farms. More on that laer, as the project evolves.

The differences in business practices cause several differences in the software, so we currently have two different verstions. If your group is interested, we would be happy to discuss the details. And if you are really interested, we could set up a demo of the software version that comes the closest to the way your group works.

PBC will also start doing more complex multi-step processes, and plans to start a community food processing kitchen next year. SMFN also has plans for future food processing. We will be working with PBC on food processing software features in the next couple of months. Those features will be based on our previous timber software, where we designed a very simple but powerful model for multi-stage processes.

Darrel Lorch, PBC Interim Board President writes:

"We appreciate how you worked closely with River Country RC&D staft who are assisting the co-op, over several months to listen to our needs, understand our unique food distribution model, and build the software, providing excellent input and suggestions throughout the process. This was done as we developed our operational model, and you enhanced the software daily or weekly as the board finalized its operational procedures and policies. "

(read the whole letter here...)

We can't work with every food group in the world like that. Takes too long, both for us and for the group. We want to generalize the software so that it is ready for use immediately by any group. But we think the way to get there is to work with real groups, not make things up ourselves.

We would like to work closely with one more food group to generalize our food distribution software. Then (we hope) other groups can just use the software as-is, with some user-defined options. If you are interested, send us an email.