CASE STUDY: Feeding America of Eastern Wisconsin and Hillshire Brands
Feeding America of Eastern Wisconsin (FAEW) has big plans to serve its neighbors in northeast Wisconsin and needed supply chain consulting support to make it happen. Their distribution center in Omro, Wisconsin is stretched to capacity, while the needs in their community have grown 61% in the past two years. They’ve launched a capital campaign to build a new distribution center.
A key feature of this new distribution center will be a clean room. This clean room will allow the food bank to repackage bulk food package donations into smaller portions. With the clean room, FAEW will be able to reduce waste and feed more hungry neighbors.
While an exciting opportunity, the new clean room is the equivalent of offering a new product to the community. FAEW understood that they needed to begin business planning to effectively bring this new resource to the community. But where to start?
FAEW identified the new clean room as one of two top priorities for which they could use the expertise of Hillshire Brands professionals. Patti Habeck, Northeast Wisconsin Regional Manager, travelled to Hillshire’s headquarters, where she met with Andy Callahan, President of Retail of Hillshire Brands, and his team of experts in marketing, facilities planning, and research. Working together, Andy and his team helped FAEW identify the priorities for the clean room. Callahan and his team focused heavily on utilizing teamwork, analysis and marketing to overcome the organization’s largest hurdle to success. The team helped with messaging and strategy to move beyond this hurdle to clear the way for the successful development of the new food bank and clean room.
