Supporting adults with disabilities to enjoy active and fulfilling lives.

While we all recognize health workers for their life-saving role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, grocery employees became the unsung heroes of Safer at Home – and rightfully so.As people clamored for food, toilet paper and other essentials, millions of grocery employees adapted to their new support role while providing exceptional customer service and inventory management.

And Goodwill is on the front line of training these essential employees.

On March 11, individuals in our Community Access Foundational Track (CAFT) program were able to show off the skills they’ve collected through our grocery clerking curriculum with a Healthy Snack Market.

For ten weeks, CAFT trainees have been learning about the skills necessary to successfully work in a grocery store setting, like delivering customer service, facing shelves, stocking, inventory management and using a cash register. In addition to classroom training, they also participated in community-based training experiences.

Collaborating with local grocery retailers like Woodman’s Market, Metro Market, Festival Foods and Sendik’s, trainees were able to observe employees and apply concepts learned in the training room to real-life scenarios. Trainees also went to the Roundy’s distribution warehouse in Oconomowoc, where they learned about the shipping and receiving processes that supply its local stores.

To prepare for the capstone event, trainees combined concepts learned though the grocery clerking curriculum and past nutrition curriculum to coordinate what was being offered. As a team, they decided to sell fruit plates, cheese and cracker plates, homemade granola bars, homemade trail mix and pretzels with peanut butter, working to find recipes, purchase the ingredients and track their product inventory.

The Healthy Snack Market was a huge success! Our trainees worked hard to keep their stations stocked throughout the day and confidently deliver customer service to guests who came to support them. By the end of the capstone event, the Healthy Snack Market had brought in $122 from goods sold.