Cardinal Points

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrei Popovici Vlad Darlene Pickman from International Student Services speaks to Bruce A. Buckley, vice-president of operations at Aramark, one of the bidders for Plattsburgh State's catering contract.

Plattsburgh State Dining Contract Committee is on a mission - to seek the best level of dining service resignation to the campus community.

On June 30, Sodexho Campus Services' 10-year contact expires, leaving opportunities for a new contract to begin July 1.

The committee consisting of 13 members of Campus Auxiliary Services, campus administrators and student leaders began its search last fall. CAS hired Porter Consulting Worldwide Inc., a consulting firm to research, assess and determine the top dining service need of the campus.

"This is a strategic planning process which involve through assessing of the current dining service and looking into 5-7 years of the future," Wayne Duprey, CAS executive director and committee chair, said.

Duprey said the committee was established last summer and met with student leaders and various campus administrators for personal interviews to assess the dining services.

He said that this search is not a response to dissatisfaction with Sodexho, but CAS needs to abide to the competitive process for dining required by SUNY regulations.

The committee regrouped in the fall, forming student focus groups and created a Web survey sent to students via the campus e-mail to evaluate student feedback of the current dining services available on campus.

With these results Porter issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) making recommendations to the committee drafting what they concluded would cater best to PSUC's dining needs.

This was followed by a mandatory pre-bid meeting for RFP on Dec.14 inviting interested food vendors who were also given a tour of the campus dining facilities.

The meeting served as an opportunity to discuss the proposal and clarify the possible queries of the vendors. The seven companies that attended the pre-bid meeting were: Aramark Higher Education, AVI Fresh, Chartwells Higher Education, CulinArt, Inc., Gourmet Dining, LLC, Lackmann Culinary Services and Sodexho Campus Services.

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