School cafeterias kick off the new school year with uncertainty about their immediate future marked by the rise in food and energy costs with an extra difficulty: the freezing of fees in public schools prevents them from adapting their prices to the real market.
From the electricity consumed to light an oven, to the gasoline for the van to transport food, to the workers' salaries; All the links that make up the implementation of the menu in a school cafeteria have been affected by inflation.
The spokesperson for the federation that integrates the main companies in the collective catering sector, Food Service Spain, María López, confirms this concern and indicates the “enormous volatility” in the prices that are being found when planning the start of the course.
If in other years they closed agreements with suppliers within six months, the current economic situation has led to that time being reduced to two weeks, a fact that López regrets and points out the difficulty it entails when estimating their forecasts.
This decrease in forecasts with food suppliers also affects “a lot” the planning they coordinate with the dietetics and nutrition departments; All of this makes the sector “up” for the beginning of the course.
In cases where the clients are public companies, López denounces that the price of their menus has generally not been updated for six years and gives as an example the “critical” situation of the Community of Madrid, where it rises to nine.
In a statement, the spokesperson already asked the Ayuso Government at the end of July to reactivate “dialogue and negotiation” and to apply “more flexible criteria in line with the reality of companies.”
With the price of the menu in public schools “frozen” companies are faced with a situation that leads many to closure, with a greater impact on small companies although, according to López, it is also causing larger companies to close these divisions. .
And precisely on behalf of the collective catering companies themselves, the director of Serunion's education division, Roberto Casal, points in the same direction as the federation.
Casal assures that the situation in public schools facing the new course is more “complicated” than in private and subsidized schools due to this freeze and notes that the employers' association is already in talks with each autonomy to achieve this update.
Despite the moderation in the inflation rate in August by dropping four tenths, it is still above double digits.
Thus, Casal is not very optimistic regarding the situation of companies in the sector, companies that, according to him, are in a “very complicated” situation and for which “it rains in wet weather” after the ravages of the covid.
Everything indicates that it will be a difficult course for school catering that will have to be used thoroughly to avoid failing its fundamental subject: that of the profitability of companies whose mission is the healthy eating of students.
Although school cafeterias have difficulties providing services due to rising costs, this "does not compromise" the preparation of healthy and varied menus, sources in the sector have stated.
The federation that integrates companies in the collective catering sector, Food Service Spain, has highlighted that companies are absorbing a “significant increase in the costs of the service, derived from the increase in the price of electricity and energy, as well as the increase in prices of raw materials.”
Some basic products on the daily menu have increased in price between 60 and 80% in the last year, with "exorbitant" increases in eggs, oil, dairy products and potatoes, to which is added a "shortage" of fish.
“Providing quality raw materials in the amount required to make varied and balanced menus is being very difficult.”
Food Service Spain considers the quality of its products, services and staff to be “unavoidable”, although “what is committed is the provision of services since, given the rising cost of energy resources and raw materials, companies are not going to to be able to continue operating in quality conditions.”
