4 ms·

Our local well-regarded (by our city's standards, anyway) public school district can't find a food supplier that can meet lunch demand. Their usual two dropped

Our local well-regarded (by our city's standards, anyway) public school district can't find a food supplier that can meet lunch demand. Their usual two dropped them before school started, saying they simply couldn't meet demand, and a third just broke contract for the same reason. They've notified parents not to be alarmed if, sometimes, the "main" dish at lunch is an individual pack of trail mix from a big-box retailer. Local restaurants and fast food places have been marking a lot of items as unavailable. A lot of packaging (drink containers, take-out containers) have been unavailable, then replaced by a similar but not-identical model, recently. I'm surprised the panic buying hasn't started yet, frankly. Supply of lots of important stuff (though I don't think toilet paper, yet? Hahaha) looks a lot worse than it did during the panic buying last year, and that's without a run on goods, so must be a sign of actual problems.

vondur 5y ago
I wonder if this is partly from lack of workers too.
nradov 5y ago
Schools used to contain actual kitchens with employees who cooked and served hot food on site. Now school districts have largely outsourced that work. That saved money and is more "efficient" but made the system less resilient.
- scohesc 5y ago
  Who would have thought that relying on another entity for literally every single thing you do has consequences when the sole entity you rely on decides to dip out or has issues! It's crazy silly how short-sighted people are.
  - eatYourFood 5y ago
    Was there any real reason to assume progressional caterers would not be able to professionally cater? My school had a kitchen in the 90's but they closed it in 2001 when my other started (and started to outsource). For 20 years, outsourcing worked just fine and saved them a ton of money.
eatYourFood 5y ago
Heaven forbid parents have to pack food in their kids bags for a while. I always took my own lunch to school.
- handrous 5y ago
  Sure, but school meal programs are a fairly important social safety net thing for poor and/or neglected kids. Anything that messes with those is a serious quality-of-life threat for the most vulnerable kids. You can see this in the design of public school meals: they're very concerned with pushing calories, because some kids won't eat much else that day. [EDIT] this is also why schools offer breakfast programs for poor students, which I assume are similarly affected by these shortages.

vondur 5y ago

I wonder if this is partly from lack of workers too.

nradov 5y ago

Schools used to contain actual kitchens with employees who cooked and served hot food on site. Now school districts have largely outsourced that work. That saved money and is more "efficient" but made the system less resilient.

scohesc 5y ago
Who would have thought that relying on another entity for literally every single thing you do has consequences when the sole entity you rely on decides to dip out or has issues! It's crazy silly how short-sighted people are.
- eatYourFood 5y ago
  Was there any real reason to assume progressional caterers would not be able to professionally cater? My school had a kitchen in the 90's but they closed it in 2001 when my other started (and started to outsource). For 20 years, outsourcing worked just fine and saved them a ton of money.

eatYourFood 5y ago

Heaven forbid parents have to pack food in their kids bags for a while. I always took my own lunch to school.

handrous 5y ago
Sure, but school meal programs are a fairly important social safety net thing for poor and/or neglected kids. Anything that messes with those is a serious quality-of-life threat for the most vulnerable kids. You can see this in the design of public school meals: they're very concerned with pushing calories, because some kids won't eat much else that day. [EDIT] this is also why schools offer breakfast programs for poor students, which I assume are similarly affected by these shortages.