The West Aurora School District board recently voted unanimously to award a food service contract for an estimated $6.5 million for the 2024-25 school year to its current food service provider. Last school year was the final year of a five-year contract with OrganicLife, the district’s food service management company, district officials said. The board changed food service providers in 2019 when it agreed to a $3.6 million food services contract with the Chicago-based company. The contract for the coming school year is more expensive than the one approved with OrganicLife back in 2019 for a variety of reasons, district officials said, including significant inflation in food and labor costs which were made worse by the pandemic, the change to the minimum wage in the state which impacted the per meal rate for the district, as well as the cost of some enhancements to the program. The district in early April issued a call to prospective vendors for the new food services contract and received three bids, West Aurora School District Assistant Superintendent of Operations Angie Smith said. The bids were favorable, Smith said. Originally, seven vendors were part of a mandatory pre-bid meeting. Food service providers typically make visits to determine if they can meet the needs of a district and gauge whether a district is satisfied with it current provider, Smith told the board. “Some of them saw that we had a good thing going and there wasn’t necessarily a lot of margin for them to improve,” Smith said. The proposals were evaluated on a 100-point scale of criteria including price, references and experience with similar-sized programs. OrganicLife earned the highest score, Smith said. The overall pricing for breakfast and lunch was “relatively tight” in the financial analysis of the three prospective food service providers, Smith said. “Based on that, our recommendation is to continue with OrganicLife,” Smith said. “While they were 10 cents higher on breakfast, they were the same on lunch, which equates to about $60,000 on approximately $6 million worth of business. “When you look at the successes that we have had and that some of the references we received for some of the other vendors were not districts as large as ours or with as many facilities or experience … we believe the best way is to move forward with OrganicLife,” Smith said. For the coming school year, officials have talked with OrganicLife about making some enhancements to the program, including hot and cold coffee and tea offerings at the high school and adding air fryers, Smith said. “This would give us the ability to air fry french fries” and other products “in a healthier way,” Smith said. The district will also discuss with an OrganicLife representative about the possibility of adding vegetarian items and hot breakfast options for kids on the go, she said. Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.