Next week, the Army plans to debut what’s meant to be a “generational” change in the way it provides food to soldiers. At Fort Hood, Texas, the service plans to launch its new “campus-style” dining concept — a model that could eventually replace legacy dining facilities around the world. But to do it at just one installation, the Army had to overcome some significant bureaucratic and acquisition hurdles.
Next week’s launch will be the first of what are meant to be five campus-style facilities under a contract the Army announced last year with Compass Group, a firm that operates food services at hospitals, universities and other large private sector venues around the world. The service is trying to bring a sense of community to the spaces so that they’re not just a place to eat — with amenities like free Wi-Fi and flexible seating.
But Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, the commander of Army Materiel Command, said vastly improving the food is a major objective too.
“We were not getting it right, and we heard the soldier feedback,” he told reporters this week. “The team has been working diligently to not only change the campus-style dining venue, but also to offer other options, which are all part of an enhanced package of the way that we feed soldiers. It’s campus-style dining, it’s food trucks, it’s kiosks, it’s take-out meals, it’s meeting the soldiers where they are with additional food options to give that whole-of-enterprise approach to the way that we feed soldiers.”
Expanded menus and service improvements
From a nutritional standpoint, the Army is trying to emulate the diets colleges and universities make available to their athletes. At 42 Bistro, for example, the new Fort Hood location, soldiers will see six different stations offering food from a rotation that includes some 3,000 recipes.
“Compass has a long history of serving not only airport lounges, but they also do the food service for the Crimson Tide of Alabama’s athletic department and the LSU Tigers. They know how to do this, and this is why they won the contract,” Mohan said. “At each facility, there will be a professional chef running the place, as well as a registered dietitian who will be authorized to make on-the-spot substitutions based upon what’s available in either the local economy or from their trusted source of vendors to change recipes to account for stock outs, but also to account for fresh fruits and vegetables that are available in season.”
Online, app-based ordering and delivery are also expected at the new locations, which, in the first round of changes, also include one facility each at Fort Carson, Colorado, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fort Drum, New York, and Fort Stewart, Georgia.
And compared to current, traditional dining facilities, they’ll have extended hours: from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day. The facilities are mainly meant to offer better options to soldiers who live in barracks on-base and have their meals paid for via meal cards, but civilians and families will be able to eat there too, paying for their food a la carte.
Bureaucratic hurdles
But Mohan said none of the departures the Army is taking from the traditional dining facility model would be possible without a lot of waivers from current law and Army policy. That’s why it’s been important that the initiative has had the backing of the Army’s secretary and chief of staff.
For example, under current law — specifically, the Randolph-Sheppard Act — the contracting process for most dining facilities needs to prioritize blind vendors.
“Randolph-Sheppard forced us to do local contracts through a state licensing agency. So our contract was actually with the state of Texas or the state of North Carolina, who then went and subbed it out to an authorized blind vendor to deliver the meal service,” he said. “Those contracts were expensive. And if the contractor was failing, we were locked into a very archaic and heavily weighted-against-us arbitration process, and we didn’t get that enterprise level management. That means the dining facility at Fort Meade or Fort Bragg is one of one or one of six.”
Mohan said the Army is assembling a legislative proposal to ask Congress for more permanent relief from the Randolph-Sheppard Act.
Additional waivers
But that’s not the only bureaucratic hurdle the Army has had to overcome so far.
“We also had to get a waiver to use food vendors other than the Defense Logistics Agency to give [Compass] more options and to do local contracts,” he said. “The second one that we had to get was a waiver from the DoD nutrition committee to allow for the dietitian. This is why the dietitian is specified to be on the site to make recipe changes. The third waiver we had to get was to allow the vendor to use value-added products in the production and delivery of meals.”
Since the goal is to encourage soldiers to eat in the dining facilities rather than go off-base or eat fast food, there may be some budget implications. Under the new model, Compass will be paid for each meal they serve to soldiers, which could mean a more successful dining model could increase the Army’s food costs.
But Mohan said if all goes according to plan, the costs of that higher utilization will be at least partly offset by more efficient operations — for example, economies of scale in purchasing. The current bulk food provider, the Defense Logistics Agency, buys about $3 billion of food per year. Compass, even without its Army contract, buys about $30 billion.
“Our current contracts are about 30% more expensive,” he said. “I think our cheapest location to feed breakfast is probably Fort Bragg, based upon headcount, and the fully burdened cost there is about $10 for a breakfast. We have places where, because the headcount is so low, it’s $50 a plate in terms of what it ends up costing the taxpayers. And I’ll be honest with you, this is why we got such a violent reaction from special interest groups when we said we’re going to change this. So we believe that when you pay them for the meals that they serve, if Compass fails and they don’t have high quality chow, soldiers are going to keep doing what they do right now, which is drive right by that dining facility. But we’re going to be able to see that now, and Compass is not going to make money.”
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