In 2020, the Lake Country Food Bank was faced with COVID and public health mandates. To meet these mandates, the food bank physically restructured the inside of the facility, taking down a wall and redesigning the hamper distribution to ensure social distancing. This also meant that clients could no longer enter the building, and their hampers would be set outside for them to pickup. To help facilitate the new procedure, the parking lot was redesigned for drive-through pickup.

While this process worked for the initial COVID pandemic, it fell short of allowing clients access to extra perishable foods throughout the month. To address this issue, the Lake Country Food Bank closed off the parking lot to vehicle traffic and developed a market for clients to browse through and select additional produce and surplus food items. This created a new challenge involving the transportation of multiple banana boxes of food to clients’ vehicles now that they could no longer drive up to the Food Bank entrance.

The Lake Country Food Bank first used their indoor carts to drive across the parking lot, but it was apparent that it was only going to be a short-term solution. The carts wobbled, and boxes would slide off. After researching different carts, the food bank tried wagons and then a two-tier garden cart from the local nursery, and the garden cart was the ideal solution.

The Lake Country Food Bank researched online and found Wellmaster, and their greenhouse carts, and other products. Pedro from Wellmaster responded to our request immediately. After explaining our situation and the various options we tried, Pedro suggested two Nesting Shopping Carts with 8” no-flat wheels.