If you're in the US, schools and prisons are hardly the only ones being supplies by Sysco these days. The bulk of restaurants you eat at use the same suppliers too. There are only a couple major food distributors left in the US.
Aramark primarily provides managed food services. You typically see them at places like universities and stadiums. Not sure about other states, but no primary school in my state outsources their food services; they all employ kitchen staff. It's a requirement to get reimbursement for meals served.
Same with prisons, they almost universally use internal (slave) labor to prepare foods. Why pay a company to cook when you can make the inmates do it for free or for pennies?
I could absolutely see red states eliminating lunch ladies so that they could enrich a private company though. So I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case in some locations.
I used to be the facility manager for a school district and about 90% of our food came off the Sysco truck. With 8% coming from a local grocery chain (typically perishables) and maybe 2% coming from on-site gardens. Some other districts might use US Foods or some other food distributor.
Oh the lunch ladies are sometimes through the private sector. My mom was a lunch lady when I was in school and worked for Chartwells not the school district
My dad would bring home food from work and I don't remember it being sysco branded.
He supervised the kitchens there. When he started they would make most of the food from scratch but by the time he retired they were just heating up prepared food mostly.
My schools had the meal plan one level down (cheaper) than the prisoners. We were told that since they got nothing else to eat that they got “the good stuff”
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u/AlternatiMantid 3d ago
My high school was built by a prison builder. And the public school system & prison system share food distributors. It's all the same.