At its May 17 regular board meeting, the Eden Valley-Watkins school board voted unanimously to replace Taher Food Service with A?Äôviands, effective this summer. The board researched districts that use A?Äôviands (Sauk Rapids, Maple Lake, and Little Falls) and all were very pleased with them. They also did a point-by-point comparison of the two food service providers, the only two to bid on the contract with Eden Valley-Watkins schools. Fifteen vendors were invited to bid.
The results of that objective comparison gave 100 points for A?Äôviands and 88 for Taher. The main difference in points was because of Taher?Äôs upper management: in the many years Taher has provided food service for EV-W schools, the district manager has never set foot in any of the schools, and brushed off elementary principal Rob Pedersen?Äôs requests to meet when there were problems.
A?Äôviands will hire a new food service director, as the relatively newly hired one at EV-W (Brittany Hirschauer) is under contract with Taher, unless she is released by Taher from that contract. All other food service employees will stay on at EV-W.
A?Äôviands also had the best bid. They are awarded a one-year contract with the option to renew for a second and third year. As EV-W schools will again participate in the summer lunch program, it will be A?Äôviands providing that service this summer.