Piscataquis Regional Food Center (PRFC) serves rural communities in the Highlands of Maine. Focused on healthy food, they distribute to neighborhood pantries as a last-mile distributor for the Good Shepherd Food Bank, and they help families directly from their Dover Foxtroft Area Food Center.
In February 2023, PRFC transformed the Food Center from drive-through distribution to a client-choice marketplace. “We wanted to create a dignified experience, reduce stigma and ensure that no one would be stuck waiting in a long line for food,” explains Kelly Sirimoglu, PRFC’s Executive Director. She knew that appointment scheduling and organized client information would be essential for this transition.
Sirimoglu reached out to industry connections for software recommendations that could meet PRFC’s needs. In addition to scheduling appointments, the software needed to function like a CRM, allowing the staff and volunteers to connect on a human level with the 200 clients that visited the Food Center monthly. HIPAA compliant data storage and the ability to upload documents to client records was also key. Finally, all of this functionality needed to be accessible for not-so-technologically savvy users.
PantrySoft was recommended by industry peers to meet all these needs. Sirimoglu was familiar with PantrySoft, but didn’t realize it was equipped to handle appointment scheduling. Coupled with its simple, user-friendly interface, PantrySoft was a great fit for PRFC.
PantrySoft “made the transition [to client-choice] so easy,” says Sirimoglu. It is critical to PRFC that their marketplace model restores dignity to the emergency food system. PantrySoft enables them to very gently collect essential information from their clients without being too invasive. When staff reach out to a client, they are equipped with context on past appointments, birthdays, and household members. In turn, the client feels known and part of a caring community.
This information also makes sure no one is falling through the cracks. With PantrySoft, the PRFC team can easily pull a report that shows which clients visited last month, but not this month, and reach out directly to those clients to follow-up. This enables PFRC to proactively serve clients, which makes a big difference as their shopper and household numbers continue to climb.
PRFC began using Pantrysoft with 200 registered shoppers in February 2023. As of October 2024, they had more than 750 registered households. Sirimoglu affirms: “There is no way we would be able to manage our organization, our appointments and our data without Pantrysoft.”
Getting set-up with PantrySoft was super easy, recalls Sirimoglu. While training sessions are included with every implementation, she remembers that her team didn’t need much training to get started. After the PantrySoft onboarding team configured the client questions for registration, the PRFC team hit the ground running with clients. As PRFC started using more complex features, like scheduling templates, the PantrySoft support team was always easy to reach with questions.
“Pantrysoft has made everything easier, we cannot imagine doing this with any other partner.” Kelly Sirimoglu, Executive Director for Piscataquis Regional Food Center