Chaos on the Menu
Carrie Plecher, director of food and nutrition services at Moniteau School District, had already been dealing with shortages of supplies and food items in the cafeteria at Moniteau when the situation took a turn for the worse.
“Just this week, our distributor had to close the deliveries due to COVID-19 in their warehouse, and so we had to buy from other places,” she said. “It looks like they may be OK starting this weekend, and we are hoping and praying that that is the case.”
Plecher described the shortages and disruptions as “a unique situation.” It's a supply chain crisis that is affecting schools across the county, resulting in last-minute menu changes and planning headaches for school administrators.
“We've had some shortages in the past, but nothing like right now,” she said.
Butler Area School District Superintendent Brian White said that the situation is “the worst he's ever remembered.”
“We have frequently had to change our menu because of supply chain issues,” he said. “It's substituted — we might order, say, chicken sandwiches, but the supplier doesn't have chicken, so they give us hamburgers instead. It's not always the food we want to serve.”
Free meals not the cause
Meals have been free for all students during the pandemic through a U.S. Department of Agriculture waiver that was extended through June 2022.
White said that he didn't believe the free meals had an impact on the shortages.
“I don't see any enormous change in demand on the number of meals we've had because of it,” he said. “I don't think that's the driver.”
White said that sometimes the cafeteria serves more meals due to the waiver, but less a-la-carte items like chips, soft pretzels and nachos. He said lines for the a-la-carte items tend to be longer as well with staff shortages, and that the shortage of staff was more severe than the shortage of food.
“I think employers are having trouble getting employees to make products at the various vendors who provide foods,” he said. “With the staffing shortages on top of (everything), people are used to unusual this year.”
An expensive problemSubstituting menu items is more challenging for a school food service department than for a regular restaurant. Rules around which meals can qualify as balanced lunches and receive subsidies specify what can go into each meal.“Because nutrition is very regulated, we can't just run up the street and get extra rolls,” White said. “They have to be certain ounces and compositions of material. The suppliers are aware of it, and so they substitute things that would fit into that, but sometimes we're notified (of shortages) and then we have to change the menu.”Moniteau School District business manager Peg Burdick explained that the situation is made more complex by how government funding for lunch supplies works.The school is allotted certain funds to spend on certain products that can't be used for other products, she said; when those products aren't available, the school sometimes incurs more expense to buy substitutes.“It puts us in the hole if we have to do this consistently,” she said. “Anything that the cafeteria department has the deficit, the general fund of the school district's overall budget has to pay (for) at the end of the year.”Burdick said that the district has had to increase its credit card limit to purchase supplies.“Feeding the kids is crucial,” she said. “Even if it costs more, we're going to do it because these kids have to eat. There's a lot of food insecurity, and for a lot of kids this is where they get their meals. We're going to keep the program going and hope that the supply chains' issues work themselves out.”Hard-to-find supplies“We've been making do with what we have,” said Cassie Mielke, acting food services director at Mars Area High School. “They still have everything that they have to have to make a full meal.”Certain products are harder to find than others: chicken patties, for instance, are in short supply.“Students love chicken, and so anything that we can substitute, we have. We've done cheeseburgers and taco days, and we had to do hot dogs once as well,” she said. “Sometimes students are surprised, sometimes it doesn't bother them.”The price of produce has also significantly increased, she said, and some vegetables aren't readily available at all.“Some weeks they have it, and some weeks they don't. I've been told by our supplier that more will be coming,” she said. “We'll order cucumbers one week, and we'll have to sub out carrots (which are easier to preserve) because they don't have any to send us.”Mielke said that menus have always been subject to change in the past, but that this year's situation is different.“There have been recalls on things in prior years that I've heard of, and it's something that they're kind of prepared for if it does happen, but at the same time, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow,” she said.“All we can do is be as prepared as possible, and have a backup plan for that menu for the day.”
