Archived Food Truck Team

[JohnSmith]

I was wondering how other stores run their Cooler/Freezer Food truck team.

Our store has the big PFresh section, a milk/cooler backwall, a freezer backwall and 2 freezer aisle's. We get on average a ~400 piece food truck order in 3 days a week, but it varies from 250-550.

At our store we have a dedicated team that does the Food Truck, it's made up of just flow team members who do the food truck after the GM truck is pushed. Currently it's 6 people.

All Produce and Meat is done by 2 PA's so the 6 people just have to do the push/backstock.

The way it's run is we sort the pallets onto flats and tubs then usually work 2 people a flat/tub. Sometimes the STL likes us to try bringing the cooler pallet to the floor directly and it takes a bit of extra work but if you work hard it seems to be okay (though some on our team don't like it. ie: yelled in the STL's face that "IT WON'T WORK!").

My big question is: How long do you guys think that should take to push and backstock? We are allotted 3 1/2 hours to do the truck. Freezer takes the shortest amount of time, of course, since they don't have us FIFO it. Most of the time the 3 1/2 hours isn't enough to finish a 400 piece order.

I don't want to sound like a jerk who thinks he's better than others, because I am faaar from that, but I think some of the members on the team are a bit slower than they should be. I do notice that the 2 people who do the backstocking tend to move quite slow, and the 1 person on the team who is sort of the leader (not a TL, though) tends to do quite a bit of talking and running around.

Is 3 1/2 hours to do the 400piece food order + backstock a good time?

 

[Dr Awkward]

It sounds to me like your issue is with the people on the team. Your trucks sound about the same size as ours, and if you gave us 6 people to push a 400 piece truck minus produce and meat, I definitely think we would get it all done and backstocked in 3.5 hours.

 

[SFSFun]

We have 2 flow TMs who always do it, and the flow TL will send more TMs over as the day goes on if the GM truck was small. Occasionally the whole team (including softlines) will blitz it and finish quickly. Food trucks are usually 500-600 pieces and we just bring the pallets right out to the floor.

Backroom takes care of the backstocking.

The time it takes varies since we don't have a specific team, but if it's just those first 2 TMs with no help, it takes them 6+ hours.

 

[Flowmotion]

Super Target here. Our FDC truck is handled by a dedicated team as well.

• Frozen: 1-2 Flow TMs
• Dairy Cooler: 3 Flow TMs
• Produce: 1 Produce TM (Has it's own TL)
• Meat: 1 Meat TM (Has it's own TL)

They also have a dedicated backstocker that can jump in as well. This TM is the designated leader.

Since our FDC and GM trucks usually come on the same days, it's not very practical for the team to use the line method of unloading. The line is usually filled with an assortment of vehicles and pallets. So they unload the Frozen and Dairy pallets via the horseshoe method with designated vehicles per section.

Produce and Meat do their own process and utilize their own dolly carts.

The Food Team from Flow usually starts their loads at 9 am and it's typically a 5 hour process. Also, I have observed, they too are pretty lax on FIFO and the 30 min temperature rule.

 

[qmosqueen]

FDC truck with 4 to 5 flow team members pushing dairy and freezer, our entire food truck is about 1100 pieces 4 days a week, (Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun)
we go through a lot of food, 20% more than 1 year ago and the same number of TMs pushing the truck.

PAs do bananas (1 pallet, 18 boxes), meat/ambient (1 pallet), and all produce, (3 to 4 pallets).

The 4 to 5 flow team members do dairy and freezer about 5 to 6 pallets. They take a pallet out onto the floor and push it, they usually just get the truck pushed with hardly every any backstocking going on. The backroom TMs have to backstock on non-truck days and freezer rarely gets backstocked.

The Logistics Zone (Flow Prfesh Team) start at 6AM and push dairy and freezer pallets till they are done usually after lunch around 1 PM. Most go home at 1 PM, 1 goes home at 12:30 and another goes home at 2:30PM. The 30 mins temperature rule is about 45 minutes and then start to take to the coolers. I don't have time to keep an eye on them since I am busy doing the meat/ambient and produce pallets.


No dedicated backstock, just random backroom TMs when they have a chance and feel like going into the freezer or dairy cooler.

And don't even get me started on the Sunday FDC truck, cause they only have about 3 flow TMs scheduled on that truck and on Mondays we have about 4 pallets left to smart huddle and get done either Monday or with Tuesdays FDC truck. We just got approved to hire more TLs and TMs through out the store we hired a new PA last week and 2 softlines TMs were promoted to TLs, so I sure hope the ETL-Log sends the pfresh truck team a few TMs my way, please oh please. One can wish, right ?

I wish my food truck was only 500-600 pieces those were the days.

oh and we get milk delivered from our vendor on the same days as the FDC truck so we have to fill the milk also and sell about 200 gallons of milk per day.... 😡

 

[Producer]

Non SuperTarget.
We receive our trucks three times a week. Trucks during the week average 700-900 pieces, and weekend truck is usually 1,000-1,300.
Opener acknowledges the truck and receives it.
One TM comes in 30 minutes before the rest of the team and starts breaking down the pallets into tubs and flats (everything needs to be broken down, no pallets on the floor at our store).
We then have three (weekdays) or four (weekends) TM's come in and work for four hours pushing the truck, and we have a team member come in at the same time and backstocks the truck for 7 hours.

We have a couple of dedicated PFresh TM's on the team, and the rest are flow team, cashiers, hardlines, etc. Despite that, we normally finish the trucks, but it takes a lot of hustle and dedication on the part of the team.

 

[Guest]

The process at my store is a joke. The flow FDC people hate the schedule change. They're always bitching about everything including their "precious one dollar". The freezer is a nightmare and basically a lost cause. It's the worst out of meat, frozen, and dairy. It's rare for the freezer in the backroom to be clean, nice, and organized and no back stock.

When I pull shit in the freezer, I don't give a shit anymore. I just pull the item and put it on whichever flat or tub is closest to me. I don't care if I put it on a back stock tub or pull tub. The freezer is a lost cause in my opinion.

The whole new/recent 7am start time for FDC is one of the worst ideas during my time at Target. I prefer the old way. The old way was a million times better. The FDC truck would come during the late afternoon or evening maybe 4, 5, or 6pm or maybe later and grocery team members would pull the pallets and place them into the meat, freezer, and dairy cooler. Flow team would work the shit out the next day at 3am. That was paradise compared to now.

Now it's a fuckin' joke but Target is a joke too so I guess it shouldn't really be a surprise.

 

[whippingboy]

I can't tell you from a food truck perspective, but I can tell you from a produce perspective (Super Target). Back in the days of milk and honey when hours were decent and best practices were solid, we had two people stock the floor for 4.5 hours, making the produce floor "perfect" for opening at 8. Then they would backstock the load for another five hours, completing push/backstock by 10:30 a.m (including lunches). These totals do not include the initial cull/clean, it's strictly fill/backstock. Loads were regularly 250 - 350 pieces four days a week.

Now we only have one person doing the initial fill for one hour before store opens. Every load day at least one full pallet is left until the next day, sometimes three pallets. One of us is on backup for most of a shift and the other is doing go backs in softlines or toys. Doing the produce order nowadays is hell.

 

[pfreshdude]

I was wondering how other stores run their Cooler/Freezer Food truck team.

Our store has the big PFresh section, a milk/cooler backwall, a freezer backwall and 2 freezer aisle's. We get on average a ~400 piece food truck order in 3 days a week, but it varies from 250-550.

At our store we have a dedicated team that does the Food Truck, it's made up of just flow team members who do the food truck after the GM truck is pushed. Currently it's 6 people.

All Produce and Meat is done by 2 PA's so the 6 people just have to do the push/backstock.

The way it's run is we sort the pallets onto flats and tubs then usually work 2 people a flat/tub. Sometimes the STL likes us to try bringing the cooler pallet to the floor directly and it takes a bit of extra work but if you work hard it seems to be okay (though some on our team don't like it. ie: yelled in the STL's face that "IT WON'T WORK!").

My big question is: How long do you guys think that should take to push and backstock? We are allotted 3 1/2 hours to do the truck. Freezer takes the shortest amount of time, of course, since they don't have us FIFO it. Most of the time the 3 1/2 hours isn't enough to finish a 400 piece order.

I don't want to sound like a jerk who thinks he's better than others, because I am faaar from that, but I think some of the members on the team are a bit slower than they should be. I do notice that the 2 people who do the backstocking tend to move quite slow, and the 1 person on the team who is sort of the leader (not a TL, though) tends to do quite a bit of talking and running around.

Is 3 1/2 hours to do the 400piece food order + backstock a good time?

3 1/2 hours with 6 people PLUS 2 PAs, that truck should be done easily in that ammount of time. Today I had 3 people plus me the PA and even though I left at one they probably got all the push done and probably MOST of the backstock. If I had to guess it was around 300-400 pieces. A typical monday is around 400 pieces.

We break Freezer and Dairy down at the line which is on the opposite side of the backroom as our ambient room. Usually 3 flats for each one, although freezer usually put Bakery/Starbucks on a 4th tub/flat.

When we push we print out the monarch/Bcode labels with the date and casepack size on any full casepacks that needed to be backstocked and we used to have someone dedicated to backstocking and then pushing when there was no backstock but now its all push and backstock at the end to make sure the push actually gets done


As the PA I usually help with the push but mainly I typically do Bakery, Meat and help with produce. The last couple months ive basically been a part of the C+S team working the push and backstock for 4 hours every M,W,F..it sucks as a PA and the only person in market during the morning. They also require i backstock all the morning pulls so when we push C+S at 10 the green racks are cleared off...so...fun times for me