Food Shortages Continue to Affect School Cafeterias

Published February 1, 2022

Items on your school’s cafeteria menu may not always be available in the serving line on any given day. It’s all because of continued supply chain issues across the country.

While food shortages continue across the nation, WCS cafeteria managers and staff are working tirelessly to provide Williamson County students with nutritious and well-prepared meals.

"Ensuring that our children’s nutritional needs are met is our top priority in the Food Service Department," said Food Service Director James Remete. "We strive to follow the menu as closely as possible. However, with substitutions being made by distributors, it hasn’t been followed as thoroughly as preferred. We continue to do our best to offer a variety of food choices each day."

A lack of employees at food and paper distribution sites has created issues that have slowly trickled down to impact USDA school breakfasts and lunches. As a result, food distributors do not always have the quantity of food products the district needs. For this reason, there are times when a cafeteria will run out of a particular entrée offered that day, but according to Remete, there will always be a choice of additional entrees to select.

The district is also having difficulty purchasing non-food items like serving trays and utensils. There is a potential in the upcoming months for students to receive their meals on different types of plates/containers than what they have had in the past. If these changes occur, they would be temporary.

"These types of challenges have been going on since the start of the school year," said Remete. "We want to make sure our families know these issues could get worse before they get better. Our schools are doing their very best to provide healthy, nutritious meals, with the options that are available. We appreciate our families' patience and grace with our cafeteria team members as they are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have to feed all the students."