Amazon works with St. Mary's Food Bank to streamline operations

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - In order to push millions of products through Amazon's four Valley fulfillment centers, it's crucial for the company to be organized and efficient.

The same applies to St. Mary's Food Bank, which distributed a record-breaking 90 million pounds of food last years, but spokesman Jerry Brown hopes change can make that number even higher.

"We distribute seven meals for every dollar right now," he said. "If we can get that down by doing something logistically that helps us smooth the process, all the better."

Today, that something may be an idea that comes from the people with Amazon by touring one of the food bank's facilities to see what they can do to help.

"We look at a lot of the ways that we store items in our facilities that makes it efficient for us, so we're looking at how St. Mary's Food Bank stores their items and their entire process flow and removing some of that waste," said Matthew High with Amazon.

Eight operations managers are focused on the food bank's agency partner area. They'll meet with St. Mary's after to give them their suggestions.

"At Amazon, we're very big on efficiencies and streamlining, so we're focusing on that today," High said.

As well as dozens of Amazon employees assembling emergency food boxes in the food bank's big warehouse. Also, a $10,000 donation on top of it all comes at a perfect time.

"We receive less donations than we do at any other time," Brown said. "We distribute more food than we do at any other time, so a large donation like this, and the opportunity to put our heads together with Amazon, one of the largest online retailers in the world, that's always fabulous for us."