Neshaminy Gets Feedback On Food Service Program

It’s never good when someone says your school district’s food service program is in a “financial death spiral.”

Those are the exact words Bill Gerichter, president of a Toms River, N.J. based school consulting firm, told the Neshaminy School District’s Finance and Facilities Committee on Thursday night.

Gerichter came before the committee after he reviewed the district’s food service program and its expenditures.

One of the biggest threats for the program is the fact that 57 percent of the food service budget goes toward labor costs for the over 300 workers. Another big threat: the district only has a roughly 40 percent lunch participation rate, which is far below where it should be, according to Gerichter.

The consultant gave the district several options on how they could go forward.

• Option 1 would cut back on staff, cut wages and save over $100,000
• Option 2 would outsource management and save $122,000
• Option 3 would outsource the entire food service program and save $273,000

When asked by members of the audience, Gerichter said he has worked with districts that have kept their own food service staff and districts that have outsourced the jobs. The former hospitality executive said he “doesn’t think that outsourcing is necessarily the answer to everything.”

School Board President Scott Congdon said he would like to work to keep the district’s food service staff and not go the route of outsourcing.

“If we can raise revenues to where our salaries are, I would love it,” he said.

School board member Stephen Pirritano said the district can certainly look at efficiences in the district.

Gerichter laid out four pages of recommendations for the district. 

“The idea is improvement,” school board and committee member Mark Shubin said.

The ideas laid out by the consultant include improving the quality and appearance of the food the district is serving, using more name brand lunch meats, raising the prices, adding a la cart items at the high school and improve serving lines for appearance and speed.

Neshaminy’s food services director, Marie Wallace said her department has already begun using some of Gerichter’s suggestions. One of which includes using slightly more costly whole-muscle chicken instead of patties for sandwiches. Food service workers in the audience said the new chicken is much more popular with the students.

One of issues school officials and Gerichter agreed needed to be tackled is participation in the lunch program. Congdon said suggested a group be set up to investigate the issue.

Audience members raised concerns over Gerichter’s comments that district food service staff made more than other area food service workers. One man questioned why Gerichter’s numbers included all public and private sector food service jobs and not just public-sector food service employees. Gerichter said that the information he used was from the state and he was unable to gather data on school district’s pay scales for food service workers.

Wallace was commended for her work to purchase food directly from the manufacture and not from distributors. Gerichter said her efforts have helped bring down food costs.

One of the other issues brought up at the meeting, involved new federal policies that limit what foods schools can serve. One lunch aide told the committee the kids don’t want to eat the new, healthier

Going forward,  food service employees suggested they get a chance to present what they do to district officials.

Committee members said they plans to continue to investigate food service and whether outsourcing is a viable option.