Public food procurement for Italian schools: results from analytical and content analyses

Abstract

PurposeThe study objective was to understand if uniformity of approach exists in evaluation methods of public food tender for schools at national and local level. This purpose was divided into three sub-objectives: (1) to extract the main criteria, (2) to document the synthesizing findings process and (3) to prioritize the different decision-making alternatives through pairwise comparisons.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the sub-objectives (1) and (2), a content analysis of the Italian food tenders was carried out. Analytic hierarchy process was used to evaluate and compare the importance of various food tender evaluation criteria (3). The inclusion criteria were: cities' selection; metro area population; population density; duration of the contract; years.FindingsSix public food tenders were analyzed. The first one concerned the National legislation guidelines. The remaining five food tenders were categorized according to the city investigated. Four macro-categories (Food quality; Sustainability; Resources; Ancillary services) were classified. AHP revealed that “Food quality” and “Resources” categories have greater importance in the evaluation phase of almost all cities investigated.Originality/valueThis study in-depth analyzes each criterion used to evaluate public food tenders, providing a new methodological framework for assigning scores to clusters of criteria. Since the literature search did not reveal any previous study on a quantitative evaluation of elements such as short supply chain, organic food and environmental impacts on public food tenders, this research delivers interesting results and fills this knowledge gap.

Understanding regional variation in the use of local food in public catering

“…Public food procurement has the potential to promote more sustainable food systems (e.g. Salvatore et al, 2021;Swensson and Tartanac, 2020), and local food is a key resource for this development (e.g. Morley, 2021;Braun et al, 2018).…”

“…The size of procurement units potentially makes a significant difference in Finland where most food processing companies are small (77% of food companies employ less than 10 people (Official Statistics of Finland, 2020)). The availability of resources is another relevant organisational aspect that affects food procurement (Goggins, 2018;Salvatore et al, 2021). In some cases, the local food available for procurement is regarded as more expensive on average than other food products (Lehtinen, 2012).…”

“…Public food procurement has been recognised for its potential to promote more sustainable food systems (Smith et al, 2016;Morley, 2021;Kaye Nijaki and Worrel, 2012;Swensson and Tartanac, 2020;Salvatore et al, 2021). The farm-to-fork strategy, produced for the EU (European Commission, 2020), identified public catering as a sector that can influence food sustainability issues.…”

“…Public food procurement has been recognised for its potential to promote more sustainable food systems (Smith et al. , 2016; Morley, 2021; Kaye Nijaki and Worrel, 2012; Swensson and Tartanac, 2020; Salvatore et al. , 2021).…”

“…In addition to addressing environmental concerns, sustainable public procurement also includes economic and social aspects (European Commission, 2021). Consequently, the current criteria for public food procurement rarely focus solely on price (Salvatore et al. , 2021).…”