Operating daily, Monday through Friday starting at 9 a.m., the physical Farm Market is set up similar to a big box warehouse, such as Costco or Sam’s Club. As hunger relief agencies come in to pick up their food, they experience a sense of dignity brought on by the clean, organized environment that provides more of a "shopper" feel.
The power behind Farm Market, however, happens online with our inventory control system. Each afternoon, registered hunger relief agencies receive an email letting them know that the next day’s Farm Market is open. They then access our password-protected, online system and select the produce and other nutritious food they would like to order. We never know, from day to day, what we’ll have available in the Farm Market. We are completely dependent on the donations that come in each day from food service providers and wholesalers.
As our fundraising efforts allow, we hope to one day be able to purchase greater quantities of bulk produce at discount, rather than relying so heavily on the barely usable donations we get today.
The Web-based system provides a selection and organization mechanism to ensure registered member agencies get acceptable quantities of available food on a daily basis. The amount of food allocated to each agency is based on the number of homeless and low-income individuals they serve. For example, the Denver Rescue Mission, which serves thousands of people each day, may be allocated a larger amount of food than Lakewood’s Manna Ministries, which serves hundreds.
Once all of the available food has been allocated, each agency receives another email confirming their order and providing a list of the food they can expect to pick up at the next day’s Farm Market. The next morning, participating agencies show up at the COMPA warehouse at their designated time and work with volunteers to fulfill their order from the aisles.
At approximately 1 p.m. later that day, the hunger relief agencies receive an email announcing the next day’s Farm Market inventory and the whole process starts over again.