The Market on Tierra Blanca (The Market) is an independent 501(c)3 offering a dignified shopping experience for food insecure families, seniors, and students in the Texas Panhandle. Created as an outreach initiative by St. Ann’s church, The Market focuses on showing their love to all clients and welcomes them with dignity and respect.
The Pastor and Pastoral Council of St. Ann’s Catholic Church wanted to do more in their community to address food insecurity. A member of the Pastoral Council, now The Market Director, began the journey of building a food resource for the whole community and called for support making this vision a reality. Recently retired from a corporate position, Simon Leech raised his hand to step into the President’s role and serve as the operations leader for The Market. Leech recognized the need for a client and inventory management system to allow for growth while maintaining a dignified shopping experience model. “You cannot do this manually,” Leech explains, “You can’t grow with a spreadsheet”.
While in the planning phase, Leech and the team toured other organizations doing similar food pantry work in surrounding communities. Two local groups already used PantrySoft and shared their experience with The Market team. Particularly helpful to Leech was seeing how the local Catholic Charities configured PantrySoft to manage their increasing client base.
Diligent with his research, Leech looked into other software platforms that managed clients and food distribution. He noticed that few options really met the unique needs of food pantries. “Clearly PantrySoft was the frontrunner and the easy win,” Leech recalls. PantrySoft was flexible, easy to use, and could track both clients and inventory. The added benefit of implementing PantrySoft was that The Market could recreate the processes they liked from Catholic Charities, and even use their inventory items as a template to get The Market up and running quickly.
For The Market, PantrySoft was able to prevent problems from the very beginning. “PantrySoft supports a very efficient operating model,” elaborates Leech. Client registration is simple and fast, which is critical for an all-volunteer workforce. During visits, check-in and check-out is easy which allows the staff and volunteers to focus on the client. With their goal to offer a dignified shopping experience, time-consuming paperwork would just get in the way. “PantrySoft enables you to be more client focused,” Leech continues, “You’re focusing on the client because you’re not so absorbed with administration.” The Market volunteers understand that clients enjoy visiting not just for necessities, but also for the social connection. With this in mind, volunteers take the time to walk with clients while they shop, and help them load groceries into their cars.
The Market also utilizes PantrySoft’s inventory management, a crucial function since the need for products has continued to increase since their launch. Volunteers can update inventory quickly and then stock the items to be ready for the next client visits. Manual adjustments are a breeze, and the adaptable system allows The Market to keep their large inventory functionally accurate and ready for clients.
PantrySoft’s reporting ties it all together and makes it simple to tell The Market’s story to clients, donors, and the community. “I really appreciate the reporting capabilities,” adds Leech, “They are easy to use and have allowed me to produce metrics and details that are essential [to promote our impact].” To gain support and keep The Market operating efficiently, Leech needs details on households, client demographic information, age brackets, pounds of food, popular items, retail value, ratio of saving and more! Leech has been impressed with PantrySoft’s options: “Anything you think of that you want to do reporting wise, you can figure out how to do.”
Since the soft launch of The Market in November of 2023, they’ve managed a rapid growth in their client base. Leech’s metrics show it: “We’re averaging [in unduplicated household members] 10% growth per month. That’s significant. We couldn’t do that without PantrySoft.”
Leech describes the support from the PantrySoft team as “exceptional” and “customer centric”. In his experience, you can’t run a food market at any scale without a solid team, and a solid software solution. For Leech, part of that team are the very knowledgeable and helpful folks at PantrySoft. What would he say to a food pantry thinking of implementing pantry management software? “I would shout from the rooftops that PantrySoft is the choice you should make,” proclaims Leech.