Written by The Oregon City Farmers Market reached out to Lean Portland for suggestions on how to offer their year-round market during a pandemic.
As Lean Portland has experienced with other nonprofits, their goal is to remove waste and inefficiency in the process unrelated to building relationships, so that more time can be spent in conversation between volunteers, staff and customers.
After Lean Portland volunteers observed the drive-thru market option already in place, they created a summary of the data and provided feedback. Some suggestions included:
- Provide estimated waiting times for the cars in queue (similar to waiting in line at an amusement park) based on the number of cars in line.
- Standardize vendors interaction with customers
- Designate a traffic manager (what we would call a value stream manager), to help direct cars around vehicles that are stopped for an extra long time (when backups and bottlenecks occur).
In general, there seemed to be very good communication between the Market Manager, the vendors, the customers and the volunteers, which is ideal for making future improvements.
Read the entire article at https://leanportland.com/local_events/oregon-city-farmers-market-focused-on-improved-customer-experience/