It's Been A Busy Spring...

We've been busy! From finishing the food insecurity order we did for HRI in Cambridge, to starting our shipping business in January, things have been ramping up and we definitely had a long drought of staff, being shorthanded and constantly looking for employees. 

We are good for the moment though and have an amazing team of 5, Robie (my business assistant), Daisy, Santanna, Morgan and KC (our fearless delivery driver & kitchen assistant as well)! It's lovely to have a full house and get so much done while having fun at the same time.

The pic you see here is of Commonwealth Kitchen's relatively new filling machine. We used it for some of the food insecurity order - what you see is the 200 1/2lb white rice part of the order - and it works pretty well. It allowed me to do all 200 1/2lb bags myself but some of us decided overall, when we work together, we are faster. This is because:

1) The machine takes a certain amount of time to reset and get ready to refill between fillings. This amount of time allowed me to fold and label each bag before it was ready to reload again. Minus - with more than one person, that leaves a lot of waiting time. Plus - one person can accomplish quite a bit.

2) With four of us working, one person can stand on either side of the scale, scooping alternately, with one folding and one labeling. This includes me boxing the bags up and refilling the scale container at the same time. It does of course require more people. 

3) The faster you set the machine to go, the more the accuracy suffers. This means you have to keep checking bags with a small scale to make sure it hasn't wandered too far from the set weight. This means the machine has limitations.

So, it's a nice machine to have, or even nice to know it's there, but we can't rely on it. I think we may be able to use it to do pre-packs of oats and other items that come in heavy 50lb bags.

I thought you all might find this interesting as this is a small slice of life expanding SUPPLY Bulk Foods. We aren't following a plan someone else laid out for us. We have to have our thinking heads on and figure out our path as we go.