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Procuring Good Food at School: From Contracts to Lunch Trays

In 2023 and 2024, the Urban School Food Alliance (USFA) held brainstorming sessions and focus groups comprised of hundreds of SFAs, state agencies, and food industry representatives to identify, revise, and produce lists of common school food procurement challenges and training topics that could help build the capacity of SFAs to address these barriers. These findings put the gears in motion for USFA to explore whether a national sample of SFAs would have similar or different procurement challenges and
training needs.

To further understand these challenges, USFA sought research support from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, which issued a survey in January 2025, and Partners for Public Good, which analyzed survey results and produced this report. This survey, targeted at school business officials and school nutrition directors, aimed to identify the top school food procurement challenges that SFAs face and better understand their procurement training needs. Researchers focused on training needs specifically because stakeholders named a lack of procurement training as a top challenge in USFA’s earlier research. In this context, training can communicate the most up-to-date rules and regulations; demystify the procurement process; and help Child Nutrition Program staff develop key professional skills.

Prepared in Partnership with: Urban School Food Alliance
Authors: Pamela Portocarrero, Laura Merryfield, and Elena Hoffnagle
Contributors: Kailey Burger Ayogu and Whitney Teal

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