Holt Public Schools has reduced lunch options for students at its elementary and middle schools from two entrees to one as the district deals with food supply issues.
The district announced the change in an email to parents in mid-September. Holt Junior High School and Holt High School students continue to have two entree options. School breakfast is not affected by this change.
Holt’s Director of Food Service Evan Robertson said school cafeterias constantly had menu items out of stock once other schools came back into session in September and were having to make substitutions.
Robertson said food shortages could go on for the rest of the school year.
“My optimism side says I would like to be back to normal by January, but realistically I could see the rest of this school,” Robertson said. “Manufacturers can’t manufacture the product, there’s not enough truckers to ship the product and the distributors don’t have enough employees to ship the product. It’s just a perfect storm all at once.”
The district will do its best to help students with dietary restrictions, he said. The district sends out menu notices at least five days in advance and has specially prepared meals for when pork is in the lunch entree. For the most part, Robertson does not think this is a problem because the food service substitutes pork with other meats like chicken or turkey.
Robertson said he thinks higher demand for school lunches nationwide may also be squeezing suppliers. This is likely caused by the United States Department of Agriculture’s decision to make school lunches free at the start of the pandemic because of threats of food insecurity.
Dan Netter / The Spartan Newsroom
Students at Wilcox Elementary School and some other district buildings now only have one option at lunch. In mid-September, the school district reduced lunch entree choices in response to food supply issues.Related: Holt Public Schools provides free meals to residents, students during pandemic
Kristen Osterhouse, a parent of a first grader at Wilcox Elementary School, said she does not have an issue with the reduced entree options, but she has heard some negative things from other parents.
“I’ve seen some negative things on Facebook and I just have a hard time understanding why people are frustrated about free lunches,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful.”
B.J. McPhall, a parent with children in the school district, does not like the decision although he understands why the school district chose this path.
“I have a child with special needs and he likes the choices because he doesn’t always like the first choice that is given,” McPhall said. “We’re having a lot of supply chain management issues these days because of COVID. I just think it sucks because now kids don’t get a choice.”
Mark Schurman, corporate liaison for Gordon Food Service, agreed that there are a variety of supply chain issues in the food service industry is causing problems. He said that at the start of the pandemic, demand at grocery stores skyrocketed while demand at restaurants fell. Now that people are going back out to eat again, restaurant demand is rising, but grocery store demand is not falling.
“They simply kept their home pantries stuffed, and they began to eat out more,” he said. “So you’ve got that overall growth in demand.”
Schurman said he believes many of the issues surrounding the shortage of food will be solved in about nine months.
“I think many are suggesting that it may well be the second half of the calendar year ‘22 before we really start to see many of these issues worked out across all these various industries,” Schurman said.
Some experts believe these issues may not be figured out for a long time. Trey Malone, a Michigan State University professor of domestic food and agriculture, said because of baby boomers retiring and bad immigration policy, labor shortages will likely continue to cause problems for the food industry.
“I think a lot of this is just the new normal,” Malone said. “Automation is going to be the big question and it’s really hard to predict how long it’s going to take to innovate away from this, but I would guess it is a pretty low likelihood that we’ll ever go back to what the pre-pandemic world was in terms of labor supply and agrifood.”
While the shortage is not affecting high school students right now, Holt’s food director said it has the potential to reach them.
“That is dependent on how this winter starts out with COVID,” Roberston said. “We could see major plant shutdowns again from Tyson or S&F Foods or Schwan’s, the effects would be felt up here too.”