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2 | Tuesday, March 3, 2020
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Graduate student improves efficiency of food pantry OLIVIA ALBERT Lantern reporter albert.228@osu.edu Anthony Unger graduated from Ohio State in 2012 with a degree in chemical engineering and a job at tire company Bridgestone. Six years after graduation, Unger found his way back to Ohio State with the goal of giving back to the community and expanding his career beyond chemistry. Unger, a graduate student in business administration, said he was introduced to Lutheran Social Services Food Pantry
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through Fisher Board Fellows, a in the household in order to destudent-run organization at the termine how many points they Fisher College of Business. Now, will receive to use on items at the Unger is using his skills in data pantry. analysis to make the food pantry With an online ordering system more efficient. implemented in 2018, Fralic said “I saw it as a really nice oppor- clients can order nonperishable tunity to do something beyond the items online for pick up at the disclassroom, connect to the outside tribution centers. Once clients arcommunity and use some of my rive at the pantry to pick up, they experience in the business world can shop for perishable items as to make an impact,” Unger said. well. Each of the program’s 30 memUnger, the only person who bers is paired with a nonprofit to helps the pantry with data and work with during the second year operations, said though the online of their graduate program. Unger ordering system is a great system, said LSS was his top choice. it is hard to collect data. Jennifer Fralic, director of LSS, “The dashboards on there arsaid the pantry serves 12 counties en’t very intuitive,” Unger said. and more than 4,000 families per “But there’s the opportunity to month and is moving toward be- export all of that data.” coming more time and cost effiUnger said he exports the data cient. into Microsoft “The projExcel, anaects that we’re lyzes it and working on comes up with with Anthony insights reis a remodeling garding the of our facilities I can’t think of another most poputo enable us to lar among 66 be more effi- food pantry that nonperishable cient and effec- actually maintains products and tive in provid- a live accounting of how quickly ing emergency they move off food to our their inventory. of the shelves, community,” thereby inFralic said. creasing effiJENNIFER FRALIC To shop at Director of LSS ciency for the the food panpantry. try, Fralic said “We can use a family must be at or below twice the data to focus on those items the federal poverty level, which moving forward, so that we can is $26,200 for a family of four, most effectively and efficiently according to the federal govern- get those items in and make sure ment. From there, clients create a that they’re available for the cusfamily profile online and list the tomers,” Unger said. number of people and their ages Unger said the data is also help-
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COURTESY OF SARAH MILLER
Anthony Unger, a graduate student in business administration, collects and analyzes customer data to improve cost and space efficiency at the Lutheran Social Services Food Pantry.
ful in determining the next-best items to offer when certain products are out of stock. “It’s rare,” Fralic said. “I can’t think of another food pantry that actually maintains a live accounting of their inventory.” The goal of the initiative is to better serve the customer, Unger said. “The things that we can do to be more operationally efficient and improve the process flow potentially can get the customer in and out of the food pantry faster, and they have a better experience, instead of sitting in the pantry waiting for things that they need,” he said.
Unger said this also saves the pantry time and money because it can now calculate the most cost-efficient time to reorder an item. With limited space in the warehouse that houses the products, Fralic said the new system has been very efficient. “By knowing what clients purchase through Anthony’s analysis of how fast items move, we’re maximizing the space and making sure we have the items they want in stock,” Fralic said.
