Building Healthy Nutrition into the Food Service Contracting Process in the County of Los Angeles

Introduction: Twelve County of Los Angeles departments offer or sell food and beverages in their cafeterias, snack shops, and other food service venues. A majority of these contracts with external vendors are selected through a competitive solicitation process -- Request for Proposals (RFP) -- to purchase food. The RFP sets criteria to solicit proposals from vendors. Within this process, healthy nutrition standards can be integrated. Government food contracts have historically not focused on improving nutrition quality. This session proposes to review the contract process and describe an approach to integrating these standards into food and vending service contracts.

Approach: This presentation will review key components of the contract solicitation process including the review of food service RFPs and the development of nutrition standards contract language. Lessons learned including key facilitators and barriers to implementing contract changes are presented within the context of healthy food procurement.

Results: Through a review of food and vending contracts, a process map on the key steps to building healthy nutrition into the contracting process was developed. This process has been applied to the review of 8 food service RFPs. Understanding the RPF process, timeline constraints, and the need to educate prospective vendors were key to the County of Los Angeles government introducing healthy nutrition standards into the field of practice.

Discussion: Utilizing the procurement and contractual process to integrate nutrition standards into practice and to influence the purchase and availability of healthier food represents a useful model for other jurisdictions interested in taking similar action.