I was a cafeteria monitor for at least my senior year in high school (maybe my junior year also). It wasn’t a bad job. We made sure kids didn’t act like kids, food wasn’t thrown, the lines moved along, and the finished trays didn’t back up on the conveyor back to the kitchen. The benefit, monitors got as much food as we wanted, and we had a great team of cooks who served 2,700 kids a day (it was a closed campus) and growing boys need a lot of food.
I hadn’t thought about this in way-too-many years until I saw a headline in the Wall Street Journal on July 26 that said, “Supply Chains Pinch School Menus.” Food suppliers to schools are having a tough time getting food and other supplies, they don’t have enough workers, and transportation is an issue.
Just like almost every other business these days. It’s tough operating a business when you don’t know when you’ll get materials, will you have enough employees, will your customers want what you have if they can’t get other things needed to make their product or do their business. The article mentioned one company “gambling” on stockpiling fruit without knowing what the schools would be ordering.
It also changes due diligence for business buyers. They must now look at the supply chain, the suppliers, how they get the product, etc. For a while the top worry was easily employee availability and if supply chain worries haven’t overtaken that worry, they’re a close second. Another example in the article was about suppliers backing out on their customers. Tip to owners (especially soon-to-be sellers), have multiple suppliers and always be in contact with them.
For buyers, it’s be cautious and investigate the heck out of the supply chain.
“We can understand things better. We can never understand things fully.” (Physicist) David Deutsch
