NIESC conducts yearly Cafeteria Food & Supplies bids on behalf of our member school corporations. The following is the award memo for the current bid term:

  

TO:                   NIESC Member School Corporations,                    Cafeteria/Commodity  Vendors
   

FROM:              Lisa Abell, Cooperative Purchasing Manager

 

DATE:              May 18, 2011

 

RE:                   Awarding of Cafeteria and Commodity Distributor Bids

 

 

Bids for Cafeteria Food & Supplies and for Commodity Distributors were due on April 15, 2011.  The Food Service Directors met on May 5, 2011 to go over the bids and make recommendations. Awards are as follows:

 

 

CAFETERIA FOOD & SUPPLIES

 

The CENTER received bids from Acorn Distributors, Fox River Foods, Gordon Food Service and Stanz Foodservice Inc.  The Acorn bid was limited to just the supply section of the cafeteria bid.  The committee voted to discard the Acorn bid due to the fact that they cannot meet the $250 minimum for delivery on just supply items.

 

Commercial Food Systems declined the bid online and did not submit an electronic bid. They did mail a bid bond check and a written copy of the bid which was rejected due to it not being submitted electronically per our specifications.

 

New to this year's bid invitation was the allowance of a fuel surcharge by the vendors at their discretion.  The two vendors that opted to add this were Acorn Distributors with a flat rate of $7.95 per order and Stanz Foodservice. Stanz included in their bid response the following clause on the potential of a fuel surcharge: If the average fuel price for the previous quarter is within 50 cents per gallon of the original floor fuel price ($3.50), no surcharge will be necessary. If the average fuel price for the previous quarter is greater than 50 cents over the original floor, a fuel surcharge may be required based on the following scale. For each 50 cent per gallon band (increment) above the floor, $2.50 per invoice will be added to the delivery invoice.  The reviews of these costs would take place quarterly.

 

Stanz bid response also included a price increase on a list of "volatile" items.  On these items, Stanz had a contingency of a price increase once they reviewed the costs on the current market in November of 2011.  The consortium would then have the opportunity to accept these prices or reject them and remove them from the bid. The evaluation committee voted to reject these terms and eliminated these items from the bid.

 

Stanz Foodservice also had a contingency on items designated on the bid as New Bid Items.  These are items they were bidding, but do not currently stock.  Stanz wanted the corporations ordering these items to notify them of the quantity they would need to order from the manufacturer. The specifics of these conditions are included in the bid sheets being distributed to the schools and the vendors.  The evaluation committee voted to not award any item designated as "New" from Stanz under these conditions. Our bid language is specific to the point that we do not allow vendors to hold a school corporation to order a certain quantity from any given vendor. 

 

The following school corporations will be serviced for the bid period of July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012.

           

 

                                                   Minimum Order for Delivery is:

 

Fox River Foods – $350                                                 Stanz Foodservice-$400

        Gordon Food Service - $400                                  Asian Food Solutions:-144 Cases (3 pallets)

 

*The award recommendations are as follows: Gordon Food Service is awarded 85 items, Stanz Foodservice is awarded 77 items and Fox River Foods 217 items.  4 items were removed as either no bid or duplicate items.

 

 

Pricing and additional information is included.  Please call me at 800-326-5642 or e-mail me at: labell@niesc.k12.in.us  with any questions or concerns. Thank you for your participation in our bid. We hope you will continue to bid for our schools in the future. Please contact the individual schools to work out any delivery or scheduling details.