US Army considering privatizing dining facility operations
The Army is considering a plan that would relieve Army culinary specialists of their duties related to dining facilities. Soldiers will still have food preparation responsibilities via feeding troops in the field. Army officials are basing their meal plan concept on what is found on college campuses. They are hoping that competing options available to Soldiers will help improve food quality.
From Association of the United States Army (AUSA):
The shift, part of the Army’s Food Program Strategy, is intended to improve quality of life for these soldiers, who run garrison dining facilities 365 days a year while still maintaining their proficiency in field feeding, said Sydney Smith, director of supply policy and programs in the office of the deputy Army chief of staff for logistics, G-4. The change will give culinary specialists more time to improve their soldiering skills and focus on their primary mission of feeding troops in the field, whether during training or while deployed.
Responsibility for operating installation dining facilities will eventually shift to contracted companies that will have to compete for soldiers’ business with other dining options across installations. This “campus dining model,” developed in part by learning lessons from college campuses, would include alternatives such as grab-and-go kiosks, food trucks and take-out options.
Speaking during a Warriors Corner presentation, Smith linked the food transformation efforts to the Army’s wider focus on holistic health and fitness, calling food “one of the cornerstones of the Army fitness program.” She said the changes to garrison food service will “increase food accessibility, provide flexible food options and improve the Army dining facility experience,” which she said has remained largely unchanged since the 1950s.
Col. Adam Seibel, troop support division chief on the Army Food Transformation team in the Army G-4, said the service believes this increased competition will lead to sustained quality in the food served in traditional dining facilities.
Additional Reading:
McCuin, T. (2024, October 21). Army to privatize garrison dining. AUSA. Link.
yeah, I don’t see KBR swooping in and monopolizing this on the big bases and leaving the smaller out of the way posts to some local low bidder who can’t deliver because they pay their revolving door employees minimum wage and skimp on the food.
They should just outsource the whole shebang to Golden Corral. It’s basically already that anyway and it will be way cheaper than KBR.
Hell yeah!
Oh, jeez, just lived through that sh*t at summer training… worst cluster-f*ck feeding us ever, no-bid contract, UGR-As in the chowhall, possible “migrant” labor (contractor attests they’re all legal and not bad people, you know).
P.S. This stuff (somewhere between Tabasco and Thai Chili Sauce) made that sh*t edible. (If your mess hall feels they need to offer that, use it.)
We all saw how privatizing housing went 🙄
Yeah.
Universities are now pimping this out to the “lowest” bidder for increased “competitiveness and nutrition”.
And the student is paying another 1k a semester to eat with no noticeable increase in targeted success.
Great idea for the taxpayer – Army!
Aaaaand how do your Army cooks get proficient at their chosen MOS? Are we gonna have them cooking meals and then pitching them? Nothing about this makes sense logistically. I could understand this plan on a training installation that has no cooks assigned organically (Huachuca is an example, there are zero Army cooks after 11th SIG pulled up stakes).
I’m not sure how hard it is to open a can and drop it into some boiling water. Monkey dicks and shit on a shingle for breakfast again?
Had some really good Army cooks make some really good food in MKT’s. Got creative with what the Army gave them to work with. They had a lot more leeway in what they produced in the field versus what they were required to cook in garrison.
How? Virtual-reality headset cooking simulator to maintain proficiency– we need a $multi-zillion contract for that!
Follow the $…that’ll tell you where this Good Idea Fairy came from.
Yeah. Follow the money. Find that Good Idea Fairy.
Then FUCKIN’ kill it with Extreme Prejudice!
And burn the remains!
If it aint broke, dont ‘fix’ it. However, the ‘consultant’ class rakes in millions of dollars ‘re-inventing the wheel’ every few years.
If my clouded memory serves me right, there were contractor ran DFAC’s way back in the late 80’s and early 90’s spread across CONUS and OCONUS used to supplement MTOE personnel running consolidated DFAC’s.
Back in the day, the overall quality of the ‘food’ served at the DFAC was never going to be awarded any Michelin stars, but, it wouldn’t kill you all at once. In 20 years of service, in MTOE units, I only once had food cause issues. That was on a range in Graff during gunnery the 1SG kept the soup mermites too long and there was a run of the runs among the company.
Stay on the Tank!
When I was at Ft. BENNING in ’69 the MESS HALL I attended on main post was run by a contractor. It was no better than the military run MESS HALLS I attended. I have also spent a good part of my working life working in restaurants. There is absolutely no reason to think having contractors serve the food will improve it. I sincerely doubt that the folks promoting this idea have any actual experience in food service, military or civilian.
For example, suppose your Army run Mess Hall fails an inspection. You relieve and replace the Mess Sgt. and work the cooks overtime until the problems are corrected. A contractor has a contract. The Mess Hall fails an inspection, you consult the JAG and maybe go to court where someday you may get to terminate the contract.
“If it aint broke, dont ‘fix’ it.”
Amen. And if it’s only a little broke, think twice before you try to “fix” it. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”.
Balfour Beatty Communities enters the chat….
….Are they now actively TRYING to get people not to join?
That didn’t work out so well at Cavazos (Hood) last year.
I participated in Northern Strike in Michigan last year. The contractor food was almost inedible. When an Army NG Field Feeding Company arrived, it was much better. It wasn’t great. They could only do so much with what they were supplied with, but much better than the contractors were.
Five years after this is implemented an OIG report will reveal just how much we “saved” as taxpayers and how the quality of food depreciated in each of those five years.
I hope to be wrong, but I see base housing that isn’t fit for an illegal alien being foisted upon the troops with jack shit being done to fix any of it in a timely fashion.
It’s always interesting to watch the nation that identifies numerous days to honor the troops and constantly thanks those troops for their service actually have to serve the troops that serve(d) the nation….from my perspective out here in the private sector it is when the rubber meets the road that the reasons for recruiting struggles becomes painfully obvious.
I can’t imagine any private sector business constantly fucking its employees and unable to meet turnover replacement numbers staying in business….things have gotten so competitive in the private sector in the East Coast tri-state area that coveted skill sets can get amazing wages and benefits…
But sure, shitty food, sub-standard housing, forced separations for vaccine refusals over a vaccine that didn’t actually prevent anyone from catching the virus, regional issues with VA health care facilities, etc…etc…etc…have nothing to do with military recruiting and retention.
KP duty is an important part of Basic.
Wether it’s working the dishwasher or DRO, you get a
real lesson in real life.
I was lucky enough to work a kitchen at a YMCA camp before
joining the Army so Basic KP was not an unfamiliar task to me.
Food prep and cleanliness is essential to combat ops.
Damn, now I’m hungry.
KP was still around when I went through; it was a nice break from the Drill Sergeants, and a chance to get a little extra food. Back then (2001-2002) the DFACs were still inside the battalion area (starship-style with company training areas on the outside and classrooms and the DFAC located in what would be the courtyard), and we got less than five minutes to eat, with about five or six rows of tables, and once the last row was getting filled, the first row was ordered “on your feet!”.
By the time I was on the Trail (2016-2018), the DFACs were standalone buildings capable of seating four companies at once. There was no KP, though Duty Squad would dispatch servers just before the company marched over. All of the DFACs on Sand Hill were completely contractor run, without the normal E-7 NCOIC and Warrant Officer overseeing operations. And… they ran smoothly, for the most part, with the only hiccups being when another company stole an extra mermite for field chow and we ended up shorted on proteins or vegetables.
The Mess SGT during KP was my first introduction to an authority figure who actually cared (ok, the Drills cared, too, but in a different way and I was too young to see it), using his limited time over us to make sure we had full bellies and a little time to breathe.
Years later in my career, we’d often get in from the field far too late to make it to our designated facility and be forced to try our luck at the first chow hall we could find – the contractor-run ones always refused to serve us but – without fail – every time we walked into one and there was a Mess Sergeant anywhere around, he’d say something along the lines of, “Fuck the paperwork, no soldiers go hungry on my watch!”
The Mess SGT is an endangered species billet, if there ever was one, and the army will regret letting him go extinct just like she did with the LRRPs.
I went across Sand Hill back in 92. It was all civilian run chow halls in the starships and at 30th AG.
My son was just at NS Corry Station and he said the galley was run by civilians, and I’m sure he said the Galley at RTC/NTC Great Lakes was also run by civilians. In my day, the galley at RTC San Diego was staffed by military, and BMT companies had to do service week during boot camp. I was in a Drill company, so we skated out of the detail.
Spent three days in June of ’87 on the loading dock of a DFAC at Ft. Leonard Wood, housing out garbage cans with hot water, while waiting for our BT company to fill up. Good times!
We’ve been supplementing our shore kitchens with civvies for decades, out of necessity. They also prepare the ‘ haybox’ meals in the field.
Our military cooks are needed aboard ships and in the field.
I enjoyed some of the KBR meals. Beats the hell out of ‘ Supreme ‘ 🤢
One evening, I pick up my Chicken kiev sat down, took a bite and spat it right out. It was blue. Seared on both sides, raw in the middle.
I was standing in the breakfast chow line one day and the guy
in front of me points to one of the eggs on the grill and tells the
cook “I like that one right there”. The cook says “that one? you
want that one?” as he points to it. The guy says “yeah that one”.
The cook then chops it up into a grilled mess, scoops it up and
plants it on the guys tray as he tells the guy to get the fuck out
of his kitchen.
On Sunday mornings, breakfast aboard the ship, was eggs to order so the cook says how do you want them and I just answered any way you want to give them to me so he holds the eggs over the plate and breaks them over the plate. Everyone on the chow line whom were lined up asshole to belly button were laughing their asses off including the cooks. Last time I said that….
That already did this at most bases more than a decade ago.
I remember once not wanting the main entree because both were just high carb slop. So I asked for two servings of vegetable instead.
I was told they were not allowed.
So I dropped a note in the feedback box that soldiers should be able to get two servings of vegetables instead of a main entree because it would allow soldiers to make healthier choices and be better overall for military fitness.
I didn’t expect to hear anything back.
I got a call from a sergeant major that said he agrees with me but they can’t authorize it because the chow hall food service is a private contract and that option was not written into the contract.
“Ration;
There is a reason soldiers are fed “rations” and a Mess Hall is not an all-you-can-eat buffet.
As they say, “This ain’t Burger King, you don’t get it your way!”
Feeding troops in the field? What could possibly go wrong when that happens?
Oh, I have never completely gotten over the 10 straight days of Italian-Type T-Rations fed at 1/12 INF’s “Papa Guido’s Lasagna Parlor” MKT during REFORGER 87. /s/
Damn, beats having to warm-up tuna w/ noodles under my armpit as the better option!
Imma drop this right here for you tasty fellows.
My mom told me to always turn around and look before you flush.
Thanks for the memories.
How come Ham & Lima Beans never came with a chocolite bar of Ex Lax…
Pretty sure the chiclet-style gum was a laxative.
Thankfully, I had the luxury of eating on the economy before I ever had to eat a “ham & Lima beans” MRE. I found beef jerky and sunflower seeds were enough to tide me over until I could either buy or cook a decent meal.
Took home a lot of MREs I never wanted but was forced to take, there are a lot of wannabe joes who will pay good money for them.
If you needed a laxative after eating Ham & Mammyjammers you needed C-4, not Ex-Lax.
Omelette with Ham, baby! (It made great breakfast with Tabasco and coffee out in the field, okay?)
Anonymous,
I ate really well in Saudi Arabia,
mostly because my favorite MRE was Chicken A La King
(#2 was Omelette with Ham), and I could trade small items like Tabasco, Peanut Butter, or Jelly, to get my hands on 2nds of these
(as well as extra Cheese Spread).
Watch a YouTube goob review
30+ year old vintage brown MRE Chicken A La King, and EAT IT.
Ah, the Charms candy… badass move to eat the whole pack (Charms being bad luck) and holler “F*ck fate– fate is muh bitch!”
Chicken a la Schwing… there was Chicken/Beef Spew, too. I didn’t mind the Ham Slice in Nature Juices (Spam) though my grandfather, who refused to eat Spam after WW2, wouldn’t touch it. It all beat C-rations, that’s for sure. (If you played Army as kid eating Spaghetti-Os or Beanie-Wienies out of the can while sittin’ in the mud, MREs be Da Bomb!)
I tossed an MRE packet of Charms to a Somali kid. He chucked ‘em at my head and yelled “m&m’s, muddafucker!”
The C-rat version was “Ham and Eggs, Chopped”. Not bad, when warmed and with Tabasco. I prefer them to the gray and yellow powdered eggs that were the alternative in the field.
Yes, it worked so well privatizing housing, let’s try it with feeding the troops as well.
How would you like your eggs cooked
Over easy
Scrambled it is.
I got the 2 raw eggs broken over the plate on the Sunday mornig eggs to order as mentioned on my above comment.
Missed it til just now.
I asked for coddled, once, just to see the cook’s reaction….
Didn’t really want breakfast that day, anyway.
YEAH RIGHT, like some lowest bidder who hires only the cheapest labor they can find will do any better than the shit foisted on our Troops by some of the current Contractor-operated chow halls. I’ve seen pictures of it in years past, things like undercooked poultry at the top of the list, and usually said Contractors are those who “know-and-blow” as well as bribe the right people to get those contracts!
Every time I see someone using the word “holistic”, nothing good comes out of it.
The last time anything holistic was good was when Moses used his holy stick approach to part the waters.
Just imagine the surprised look on the faces of those pursuing when the Moses got to the other side and turned his staff back into a walking stick.
Oh, jeez, that’s like the “whole person” concept– guaranteed you’ll get screwed because of one minor sub-score, etc. they don’t like.