The following paper is a synopsis of a longer report, under the same name, aimed at the people responsible for implementing relief food operations. The report attempts to fill a perceived need for a manual covering the organisation of relief operations from planning to evaluation stages. Following the initial planning phase, the distribution of relief food can be viewed as a logistics operation sandwiched between two phases of data acquisition - one before the distribution of relief to targetted destinations, and the other after the distribution, to assess its efficacy and to identify problems.