If you are unfamiliar with the Clean Room, it is where most of the packing activities take place for distributions to agencies and other organizations.
Whether it is retail recovery, consisting of products sourced from supermarkets, frozen bread items, or dry products, the bulk of packing goes on in the Clean Room.
Since it is a “food-safe” room, some rules are applied to keep the products as safe as possible.
For example, hand protection is a must, not only to prevent bacterial transmission but to also prevent cuts and scrapes that can occur from handling food items.
It is surprising to see how many sharp-edged items arrive in the Clean Room. Glass is not the only offender, as something as deceptively harmless as a pineapple can also cause an injury if not deftly handled.
Drinking and chewing are not allowed in the Clean Room.
What makes Tuesday interesting is that it’s the day that fresh produce is packed.
This is known as the “Green Thumb” program, where a variety of delicious, and fresh products are sourced by Greg Olesky our Manager of Operations & Market Sourcing.
Some of the delights that have appeared in recent months include the simple, such as red leaf lettuce, avocados, plantains, mangoes, and pineapples, to the exotic, such as chayote, and a recent personal favorite, rosé strawberries.
Packing a variety of items on pallets to fulfill the agency orders is a feat that requires the dexterity and vision of a Jenga champion.
Someone who understands that a 50-pound box of potatoes cannot be placed on top of a bunch of mangoes and that the pallets must be balanced so as not to tip over when transported along the journey out of the Clean Room, onto the trucks, and onward to their ultimate destination.
The volunteers who pack the pallets are experts in this area.
Packing also requires the lungs of an opera singer.
Amidst the noise of power jacks, pallet movements, and the groaning of shrink wrap as it is stretched across a completed pallet prior to transport, the case counts for each pallet must be conveyed to the volunteers who diligently show up every week to enjoy the activity.
Along with having to transmit the order to the volunteers, the order caller must also determine the total number of pallets required for any order, and must keep track of it all.
Nancy Lyons, Jandery DeLaCruz, and even one of our Red Cross volunteers, Nancy Wagner, make this all look like a choreographed ballet, albeit a quite noisy one.
This is only half of the entire picture because there is a separate project that takes place simultaneously on the other side of the Clean Room.
That is where volunteers, consisting of either our “regulars” or corporate groups, pack the produce into individual bags as part of the child-feeding program.
This particular project, which started as a mere 200-bag packing operation, is so successful that it has grown to over 750 bags per week.
Overall, it is amazing to think about the process whereby more than 3,000 items, consisting of tons of produce, all get completed by 11 A.M.
This all occurs in an environment of camaraderie, and dedication to the mission of the organization.
Whether it is the Volunteer team, the entire back office staff, the front office staff, and the Operations team, it is truly a collaborative endeavor.
Tuesdays may be an amazing time in the Clean Room, but then again, every day is a marvel at Feeding Westchester.
