Robin,
Great questions – lets take it one at a time:
1. Sliced bread is a very high priority for Community Loaves. You are absolutely correct that would be the one improvement our food banks would enjoy. However, it is not feasible for us to slice the bread at home, take to hub and then deliver. That effort would be fraught with quality control issues and increased risk that I would prefer we not take. Instead, in conversation with our food banks, we’re testing slicing the bread or providing slicers to our food banks. That way they can freeze, thaw, slice on demand – or our volunteers can meet up and help the food bank process the collections/donations for any particular day.
This is being tested right now in Tacoma with good success. We also will be testing this at Thurston County Food Bank and Enumclaw Food Bank. It is imagined, once we know our specific equipment goal that we will apply for grant dollars to help us equip our food bank partners with the necessary slicers.
2. Bags, the short answer is no. But the longer answer is, “it depends”. If you pre-check your loaves and you remember to mark that on the printed sheet/clipboard at your drop off hub, you shouldn’t need to leave a grocery bag. You can just place your loaves in the space created/provided by the hub coordinator.
I hope that helps.
Katherine
