The UNM Board of Regents recently approved the action to enter in to a contract with Chartwells, the food service vendor recommended by the RFP committee for university food services.
Walt Miller, associate vice president of Student Life and director of the Student Union, said that David Harris, executive vice president of business and finance will have to approve terms of the contract.
The RFP committee, guided by Procurement Services, selected Chartwells from a pool that included Sodexo and the current vendor, Aramark, from scoring on documents from the vendors and from interviews.
Chartwells rose to the top based on several factors including a risk analysis plan, a transition schedule, past performance surveys from clients and a financial proposal.
“The financial plan represented only 20 percent of the total score,” Miller said.
Miller notes that the model this go-round is completely different from eight years ago. “At that time Aramark was the only bidder because of pending construction at the SUB,” he explained.
This time out, the campus community provided a lot of feedback. “Key messages included a desire to promote health and wellness, pricing and variety of options,” Miller said. Shelley Rael, senior clinical nutritionist with the Employee Health Promotions Program, was at the table. “She made us more aware. Her presence leveraged health and wellness, something Dr. Schmidly was also interested in seeing,” Miller said.
He said that he will meet with Chartwells to talk about quality control and other programmatic concerns he wants built into the contract. Aramark protects several managers who won’t be able to be hired away, but there are hourly, unprotected Aramark employees that Miller said might stay on. “We also want to see student employment increased,” he said.
“The recommendation to the Regents was a statement from the entire committee. There was no minority opinion, which helps us move forward,” Miller said. The new contract is set to go into effect June 1.