A group of about 10 Ohio School District Foodservice Directors, with the support of the Southwestern Ohio Educational Purchasing Council and the Ohio Department of Education, started the SWEPC USDA Foods Program in 2001 ! They wanted to create a streamlined process to manage and receive commodities. The goals of the program were to:
- Reduce/Eliminate administrative burden
- Expand the number of processors and products,
- Simplify and expand reporting
- Streamline ordering and deliveries.
Today, the program has grown to include 624 members and will grow to 650 for the 25-26 school year!
Goals:
Administrative Burden - Each year, by October 15, members log on to the commodity planner website
SWEPC Commodity Planner Website to sign up for the following school year. This takes about 1 minute annually to complete. This simple task is the only administrative tasks required annually. Certainly "reducing the administrative burden" goal was met.
Expand Processors and Products- SWEPC USDA Program members enjoy access to over 400 commodity products from approximately 30 different processors. SWEPC handles all of the processing agreements and provides an annual list of available processed commodity items. SWEPC also handles the procurement of a distributor contract. Currently, GFS has the contract to deliver all commodities to SWEPC members. Because SWEPC members are part of the group, if a member has spent all their entitlement funds, there is most always opportunities to get more funds if funds are available in the group. All SWEPC members receive a rebate from every processor for every processed item purchased. This offsets the minimal annual enrollment fee. The majority of members get more back in rebates than the annual cost to participate. The rebates are a bonus that we now enjoy because of the size of the group.
Simplify and Expand Reporting- Members can view all things commodities on the
SWEPC Commodity Planner Website. Auditors love the PAL reports which neatly summarize all commodity use totals for the school year. There are detailed reports on every single case purchased by school and summaries by processor as well. One very helpful tool on the commodity planner is a "thermometer" to indicate what percentage of total entitlement the district has spent. This helps districts to see how they are doing in efficiently using their entitlement throughout the school year. The SWEPC USDA Foods Program is one of the most efficient programs of its kind in the US. We regularly spend 90-100% of the entitlement allocation each year.
Streamline Ordering and Deliveries- All processed cases and non-processed cases (commonly referred to as Brown Box) are ordered to be delivered weekly with your regular GFS orders. This makes the ordering and delivery process seamless! Like all districts in Ohio, SWEPC members use FFAVORS to order DOD produce. There is no additional monthly forecasts or pre-ordering before the school year starts. After you sign up, you can access all commodity products on the GFS website where you will find helpful tools to search and provide detailed commodity information about every product.