As employees of VSA partners volunteered at local food pantries throughout Chicago, they noticed a problem. Some pantries were overstocked with items that others severely lacked, and there wasn’t an efficient system in place to coordinate inventories between multiple pantries.
So, when it came time for VSA Partners, a creative branding and marketing agency, to choose a philanthropic tech and design project last year, the company began creating Provision, an app that digitizes a food pantry's inventory and allows it to communicate with others nearby. Launched on May 15, the platform now works with four food pantries—Irving Park Community Food Pantry, Lakeview Pantry, Jewish United Fund and Marillac St. Vincent Family Service. Through the app and collaborating with food pantries, the company wants to bring half of Chicago's pantries onto the app by the end of 2018.
With the app, users can look up item details such as expiration date and quantity, as well as communicate with other pantries directly. Depending on a pantry's needs, more features, such as enhanced graphics, filtering items by distance or food type, and coordinating deliveries, could be added, said Bob Winter, VSA’s partner and executive creative director. Through the app, VSA aims to eliminate food waste by streamlining inefficient communications between food banks.
Before the app was developed, pantries sent mass emails to other pantries for food they gave away or needed, because they didn't have the time or resources to build better inventory or communication tools, Winter said.
In the beginning, the project was difficult to execute, because the food pantries lacked sufficient inventory technology and they’re largely run by volunteers. With Provision, users can quickly view other pantries’ inventories and exchange goods without sending out a mass email and awaiting responses.
The pantries will help VSA Partners quantify how much food waste has been eliminated. The company aims to cut pantries’ food waste by half, Winter said. The firm, known for working with companies like IBM, Nike and P&G, will provide the app for pantries free of charge, according to a VSA spokesperson.
“We’re always looking for ways that we can actually help the immediate areas right around us, the area we live in, not just as a company but as people,” Winter said. “It’s one thing to solve a big, hairy problem for a client or corporation, but it’s much more personally gratifying when you do it on a local level for something that is really going to make a difference.”
