by Randy Boggs
As we are finishing the third week of the Food for Good Mobile Feeding, I noticed there were some changes from week one. I’ve always heard the delivery and route system within PepsiCo as being one of the top in its field, but this week I really got to see it in action. Food for Good is no exception to the talent and hard work we have at this company.
Over the first few weeks, we noticed a few of the delivery stops on the Food for Good Mobile Feeding routes really didn’t have many kids. While some of the stops are passing out up to 150-200 breakfasts and lunches to the kids, there were a few stops that would only have 5-10 kids show up each day. Even though 5-10 kids doesn’t quantify the need for a full truck to stop, it is still 5-10 kids that may not be fed without our help. We just didn’t feel good about dropping these stops and leaving these kids without food, so the exceptional Food for Good and Operations team created a Speed Route for one of the delivery trucks.
The Speed Route is basically more stops in a shorter amount of time. Where the normal stops take 30 minutes to pass out breakfast or lunch, each of the stops on the Food for Good Speed Route takes 20 minutes. The Speed Route, led by driver Tom Ortiz, was created with several of the low volume stops from each of the normal routes. Cutting the time by 10 minutes at each delivery stop on the Speed Route also allowed an extra four delivery drop-offs to be added to the route each day, making a total of 14stops on the Speed Route (the other nine trucks have ten stops each day).
I was fortunate enough to see the Food for Good Speed Route first hand this week, and it really shows that we are improving our business by doing better. Not only are we helping these kids to NOT go hungry, but the Speed Route is adding more and more children each day that it delivers to. This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in Food for Good. It’s a great feeling to see the core strength of our business come into action while still doing good things for the community. We are truly strong as a company, and it’s great to see how much care we actually put into what we do… and even more so, it is great to see why we do it!
