Northwest College students will have a new food service provider this fall

For the past five years, NWC contracted with Chartwells for the service, but in the coming year, Sodexo will take over. The decision was influenced by tighter budgets resulting from dropping enrollment at the college.

The contract with Sodexo will provide the same level of service while reducing costs, NWC Vice President for Administrative Services and Finance Lisa Watson said at this month’s Board of Trustees meeting. Watson said a committee, which included student and faculty input, scrutinized the new contract line-by-line to ensure the best value to students for the best price to the school.

The previous Chartwells contract was based on a sliding scale, which itself was based on enrollment numbers at the time the contract was signed in 2014. The way the sliding scale was set up, costs per meal went up as the number of students buying the meals went down. That ensured the company made enough money to cover its costs.

“They have to have a certain amount of revenue to cover their operations,” said Watson.

The problem for NWC is that its fall 2018 headcount was down more than 20 percent in the past five years.

As a result, year to date revenues for food services were about $300,000 below the budgeted amount. While expenditures were down about $100,000 from what was budgeted, the college was losing about $200,000 on the Chartwells contract this year.

The five-year contract with Chartwells came to an end this year, and so the school approached the company to negotiate terms that would better fit the changing enrollment numbers and reduce losses to the school.

“They were not very receptive to that,” Watson said.

The school solicited proposals from four food services providers, including Chartwells and Sodexo. Watson said the college would have done this even if there weren’t problems with the Chartwells contract, as they would always look for ways to get the highest value for the students.

The other two providers that offered proposals were A’viandis and Aramark. Aramark had provided NWC food services for 25 years, before the college went with Chartwells.

Reducing costs

In 2014, Chartwells’ bid was actually more expensive than Aramark’s, but NWC President Stefani Hicswa said at the time that the company’s proposal provided superior service. That included providing food on evenings and weekends, as well as a program that allowed students to send texts to alert staff when an item at a service station was low or out.

The most recent budget the college signed for the coming fiscal year came with a lot of cuts to spending, including the elimination of 29 positions, eight of which were layoffs.

With budgets slimming down, costs of the food service received more scrutiny.

The Chartwells contract also stipulated the company would make $800,000 in capital improvements to the school, amortized over 10 years. The school only used about $500,000 of that cost, adding an Einstein Bros. Bagels shop at the DeWitt Student Center. Since the college ended its contract with Chartwells five years into it, NWC had to pay $315,000 for the unamortized amount, which it would have otherwise paid over the next five years.

Most employees for Chartwells were transfered to Sodexo, with the exception of one of two managerial positions.