Parks and Recreation, Office of Innovation: Farmers Market in the Time of COVID

The Challenge

Due to health and safety concerns regarding COVID-19, in late March 2020, the City of Bloomington’s Saturday Farmers Market staff determined they could not operate using the traditional in-person format. Canceling the Market would have had a devastating impact on both local farmers and Market go-ers. 

The Parks Department partnered with the Economic and Sustainable Development Department to try a system where customers place orders online Tuesday-Thursday the week before the Market, then go to a Market location on Saturday during a designated timeframe and retrieve their order in-person. Switchyard Park was chosen as the venue because it had a large Pavilion building with garage doors that could allow for sufficient airflow and volunteers to be able to keep a safe physical distance. Additionally, Switchyard Park had a large parking area where cars could queue while awaiting their order to be filled. 

In the first week of this new process, up to 500 online orders were placed.... and many of them arrived at Switchyard at roughly the same time as the larger proportion of people with last names early in the alphabet was not accounted for.  Some orders had been pre-packed, but that strategy proved to be chaotic and intense due to a lack of room and confusion about tracking/matching orders. Anecdotal reports of that day are that customers waited up to 90 minutes in their car to retrieve their order, filled the parking lot and overflowed onto the street in front of the park, and introduced some safety concerns when frustrated customers would exit their car and approach the Pavillion in-person.  

The Market Coordinators and the Director of Economic and Sustainable Development invited the Director of Innovation to an after-action review the Monday after the first Market where a modified workflow was discussed to make Week #2 an improved experience for volunteers and customers. 

The Idea

To reduce the amount of wait time for customers the Market Coordinators conducted several process experiments including:

1. Reducing the number of customer orders to 325/week and asking people to arrive in a specific time slot according to their last name.
2. Recruiting 20% more volunteers to manage traffic & improve the speed of order delivery to distant vehicles
3. Implementing a new vehicle labeling system to improve the Runners’ ability to identify where to deliver their orders  
4. Packing orders at the time of customer arrival to maximize product freshness and decrease confusion about the status of an order

In comparison to Week 1, the online ordering and curbside delivery program ran much more smoothly in Week 2 according to both external and internal parties. 

A group of IU students from the Kelley Business School’s Performance Operations Workshop observed the flow in Weeks 3 and 4 and suggested even more improvements to the process, including refining each of the five types of volunteer roles. With increased emphasis on cross-role communication, efficiency, and effectiveness, the Market Coordinators were able to reach their goal of customers receiving their order within 15 minutes of arrival on average. 

In the meantime, the Market Coordinators had been in discussion with the Monroe County Health Department about returning to an open-air shopping experience. By Week 5, the Market was able to move back to its usual spot in the parking lot of City Hall. The market staff took the lessons from the Switchyard experience and translated them to a walk-through, in-person pick up of pre-ordered products. As the season progressed, they were able to add the ability for people to “shop” in addition to picking up their pre-ordered items.

Observations by representatives from the City’s Office of Innovation and IU’s Performance Operations Workshop continued in Weeks 5 and 6. Recommendations in these weeks addressed more public health concerns than process efficiency; for example, one recommendation was to ask customers to write their name in big letters on the back of their receipt to show to the vendors because the Market is noisy and they would otherwise need to be closer than 6 feet to hear one another through their masks.

The Cost

The City of Bloomington’s Economic and Sustainable Development Department researched, managed, and paid for the online ordering system that cost $1750 for a full year of access to the platform as well as its initial set up. By Parks and Rec managing the back end of the platform, the farmers market did not have to absorb these costs directly. Personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer and handwashing stations were additional costs required to meet the public health needs. Operating the drive-through market for public health needs on-site did require more seasonal staff than in years past which led to higher staffing costs. Additionally, it took considerably more time for the staff and volunteers to set up and take down than an in-person market had required previously. 

The Benefit

The Farmers’ Market team with the help of the Office of Innovation, IU Lecturer Katie Votolato, and her students, innovated creative ways to improve the online Farmers market process from Week 1 to Week 5. 

The support of Bloomington’s local food systems is crucial, especially now. Farmers and the food and beverage artisans are key providers of essential services during this unprecedented time. The City of Bloomington is committed to local food security, to continuing to support access to nutrition for our most vulnerable populations, to strengthening our local food economy, and to providing safe, effective ways of making food available to the local community. By innovating the online model in a time of great uncertainty, the Bloomington community was able to show continued support for local farmers and growers, and small businesses, while maintaining safety as a priority. The Parks and Rec Department will decide whether to continue operating the online platform next year. 

Metadata

City Departments: Parks and Recreation, ESD, Office of the Mayor / Office of Innovation

Point of Contact: Leslie Brinson, Rachel Beyer, Devta Kidd

Partners: Indiana University

Partner Point of Contact: Katie Votolato, 812-855-5738, votolato@indiana.edu

Type of Innovation: Process Improvement

Date Implemented: April 2020