Despite prison foodservice controversy, university maintains contract with Aramark

While the Michigan Department of Corrections recently pulled out of its contract with Aramark, the state’s Saginaw Valley State University has decided to stick with the foodservice contractor. 

The university has been pleased thus far with its contract and noted that foodservice on a college campus is much different than foodservice in prison, said J.J. Boehm, SVSU’s director of media and community relations.

“From what I have observed recently and over a number of years, most students, faculty and staff seem generally pleased with the quality of food service Aramark provides here,” Boehm said. “We understand that these questions are reasonable, given the recent publicity, but we continue to partner with Aramark, as we feel they effectively meet the needs of our campus community.”

The foodservice vendor’s three-year, $145 million contract ended by mutual agreement in July, with MDOC officials stating the contract was terminated due to unresolvable contract issues, and not the continuance of negative headlines about the contractor's performance in Michigan prisons.

Recently, Progress Michigan—a Lansing-based liberal group—released a report indicating that the MDOC and Aramark failed to properly address nearly half of 3,700 issues with food safety and security within the state’s prisons, and asserted that the MDOC and Governor Snyder’s administration repeatedly failed to force the foodservice provider to improve its performance.

Trinity Services Group has since been selected as the new foodservice provider for the MDOC and will have full control of foodservice in the state’s prisons this month.