Section 11

11 - Agencies and Food Programs: Food Services

In understanding the workings of the A2H network, it is important to understand the broad differences between providers in their scales of operations. The chapter discusses a number of indicators of the size of provider food service operations. As will be seen, providers vary dramatically in size, ranging from pantries which serve just a few clients per day up to pantries and kitchens which provide food to hundreds of clients on a given day of operation. There is great variation among providers in the detail with which they keep long-term records such as service and client counts. Therefore, the analysis below focuses on measures of size based on either a "typical week" or on the "most recent day the provider was open," since these are the size concepts which respondents were in general best able to relate to.