Summary
The picture above is a delivery truck for the Mid-Ohio Foodbank (MOF). Although many focus on the front end of food aid, there is an entire back-end of distribution that has also had to make some major changes in response to the coronavirus this year.
This article from the Journal of Service Management explains how certain delivery processes have changed to offer safer guidelines for its workers. For example, transferring foods from truck to store (and vis versa) has become more laborious as due to social distancing policies put in place. Additionally, a lack of ability to distribute unpredictably high volumes of food in short notice has been a problem.
As a solution the article suggests using a transformative perspective as the new supply chain is being formed. This specifically means being more dynamic and flexible when completing tasks and not being profit-oriented.
Reflection
This article will be extremely helpful for my project because it also brings up food pantries and their relation to the supply chain. Specifically, they offer a list of further research questions that should be addressed to further their ideas. Hopefully, these can be at least partly addressed by my project.
