Exciting partnership with Prairie Land Food

We at New Covenant UMC's Grocery Relief are very excited to be working with Prairie Land Food to help people get quality healthy food at affordable prices!

The October order turn-in date was Monday, October 10, but PLF continued to take orders until they are sold out for the month. Several people got in later in the week before the food boxes were all sold. If you ever want to order but it is past the date, go ahead and call Nancy at 316-265-7061 or June at 800-998-9436 to see what is available.

Distribution will be Saturday, October 22, 2010, from 8:00-9:00 am.  On some of the early order receipts, I put 8:00-10:00am. We will certainly stay around if needed. I also forgot to tell some people that the Prairie Pak, the Meat Only selection, and the Fruit/Veggie selection come in bulk. We will have an assembly line for those items. If you ordered any of those, please bring a box or reusable grocery bag if possible. We will have extra boxes.

Although the basic principal of bulk purchasing for reduced cost is the same between Prairie Land Food and Angelfood Ministries, there are several differences that I would like to point out:

Prairie Land Food is a regional program. It was started in Hillsboro, KS by two people who saw a need and took the steps to fill that need. They serve Kansas, Nebraska, and part of Oklahoma and have no intention of going national.

With AFM, each box had $1 of the price go back to the host site. Most customers were not aware of this. With PLF, the box price is for the food. There is a $1 "site handling fee" that is added to your order that the host site retains. (For those using Vision, the $1 needs to be paid in cash.) We use this fee for printing flyers, postage, and other costs of running the program. For New Covenant, this will average about half of what we received from using AFM. It is not a money maker by any means, but it is nice that this ministry is close to self-funding.

The main food box, the Prairie Pak, is smaller than AFM's Bread of Life signature box. It has fewer items and costs less.

The Meat only option and the Fruit/Veggie option are subsets of the Prairie Pak.

The exact contents of the Fruit/Veggie box are usually available about a week before the order turn-in date. This is later than the AFM fruit and veggie box contents list. The PLF fresh fruit and vegetables are seasonal and fairly local.

The specials and "choice" and "bonus" items will vary quite a bit from month to month with PLF. Choice and Bonus items require the purchase of a Prairie Pak or Special. There are no other restrictions on item purchases.

And last, but not least, I get to work with the same person for everything related to PLF! June Glasgow is the south-Kansas representative. She came to New Covenant in September to talk with me in person about the program. She is available to me via email and telephone, and she will personally work with customers who want to order but get paid at a time that doesn't exactly fit the PLF standard ordering time.