I Was Sent A Survey About The School Lunches At The High School By The Contractor Company, Sodexho…

Nobody can mess up food service as badly as Sodexho has. They have gotten contracts at local schools, hospitals and the big casino a few miles from where I live. The food got so bad when they contracted that we wouldn’t even accept the free comp buffets that the casino sent to us. Better to go to Golden Corral before going to the casino than eat that mess.

They asked for the opinion of the meals at the high school where the boy is going (his last year as he is a senior). I wrote that the food is so bad now that he refuses to eat in the cafeteria. And that if he is given the choice of eating in the cafeteria or not eating lunch at all he’ll choose to go hungry. I hope they got the message. Sometimes he doesn’t feel like driving and stopping somewhere else to get lunch and will just go to the school and not eat.

This school system needs to go back to hiring staff to cook the food and cook bread and other things from scratch. It was good food when I was going to food and that’s how they did it.

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Heartlander

I believe Sodexho is still a part of Marriott Management Services. They merged about 25 or 30 years ago. School lunch/meals is a near impossible business where the people paying the bills and the people eating the food are often at opposite ends of expectations. The people paying the bills demand conforming to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (what the FDA & USDA believe is a healthy diet), which isn't the same as what the kids really want to eat. To make matters worse, contract providers strike their deals with the school board a year+ in advance, and no one really knows how much tomatoes will cost a year from now, so price rather than quality drives the system. The reason why contract providers like Sodexho are planning and providing the meals is usually because of failed internal attempts at schools running their own kitchens. When schools run their own kitchens they also have to comply with all the same rules laid out by the funders ... the state and federal government.

To fix school lunches I think we have to first fix who pays the bills and restore autonomy to the school districts. It's kind of like how the federal government's efforts to supposedly make schools better so often accomplish just the opposite. Or how HUD financed housing can double the cost of building an apartment building .

cherokeepatti · 70-79, F

@Heartlander Sodexho messed up the casino buffets and those meals are not cheap. For example when they had the contract the buffets were prices at up to $35, depending on what the theme was for the evening. The previous contractor was good but apparently the casino wanted a better bid and chose Sodexho. So many complained including online reviews that they wouldn’t select them again after their contract expired.

Heartlander

@cherokeepatti

When the new contract goes out for bids, the responders are scored on a 5 or 10 point evaluation check-list, with $$ being at the top of the list. If it's a government contract the checklist also includes such things as the bidder's anti-discrimination policies. If the responder is a minority owned business they get bonus points. Too often they don't get around to evaluating the quality of the end product until after the contract is signed and the complaints start rolling in.