Bidder Questions Received Regarding RFP for Storage and Distribution of USDA Foods for Vermont Schools and Other Recipient Agencies

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1 Bidder Questions Received Regarding RFP for Storage and Distribution of USDA Foods for Vermont Schools and Other Recipient Agencies Question: Is the current contract available for review? I searched online but I was unable to locate it. Answer: The existing contract is attached. (Posted at Question: Can you tell me the number of deliveries made during the last 12 months of the contract period? Answer: From April 1, 2014 to April 1, 2015 there were/will be 80 deliveries. Most of these are partial truckloads of between 228 and 700 cases, not full truckloads. Question: How many locations require deliveries as opposed to pickups? Answer: Almost every location on the list requires deliveries it is very rare that a site will pick up their food. Usually, it would just be one of the summer sites (listed at the end of the list), who might only have 1 or 2 cases allocated to them. I believe we had one summer site choose to pick up their items last year, and that was it for the whole year. Question: At the bottom of page 2 it states that, The Contractor must maintain a webbased system.. Am I correct in understanding that the USDA system won t work for this purpose, [we] would have to provide a separate system to be accessed by the schools for ordering/order tracking? Answer: Yes, you are correct. USDA s WBSCM system only tracks the food until it arrives at the contractor s warehouse, where it is marked as received in the system. The contractor needs to maintain their own online system that allows RAs to log in and view their balances at the warehouse and schedule those items for delivery. This system does not need to show items that have not yet arrived at the warehouse, since those would still be able to be tracked through USDA s WBSCM system. Question: How many deliveries annually does the current contractor provide total to all recipients? I know the number per recipient varies so I m just looking for an estimated total number overall. Answer: The current vendor has made 4,345 USDA Foods deliveries in the past 12 months. Question: I'm doing the math and that number [of deliveries] seems very high, are you sure that it's accurate? Page 1 of 5

2 Answer: There are approximately 37 weeks in the school year, so if every school RA got weekly deliveries for the whole school year that would be 8,066 deliveries, plus the summer deliveries for the SFSP program so I think the 4,345 number is accurate. In addition, about 7 of the RAs on the list have requested that the current vendor deliver to multiple delivery locations (high school, middle school, elementary school(s)), so those are all counted as separate deliveries. Question: Do you have a state map with the delivery locations marked? Answer: Unfortunately, I do not have a map of the delivery locations. The Agency of Education does maintain a list of addresses for all public schools and all private schools on our website, so you can find the addresses for most of the sites there: (please be aware that not all the schools listed on these directories receive USDA Foods deliveries). Question: Under #2, Detailed Requirements; are all orders to be filled as whole cases, as in all 6 #10 cans as opposed to split cases of 3 cans? Same with bags and bales of other goods. Answer: All orders are filled as whole cases. In no circumstance is the vendor expected to split cases into smaller quantities. Question: Are bidders required to attend the bidders conference in order to submit a bid? Question: Is attendance at the bidders conference mandatory? Answer: Attendance at the bidders conference is not mandatory - the conference is just an opportunity for bidders to ask additional questions. Question: Can the contractor assess all charges to the RAs by delivery only and not include a storage fee? Answer: Yes, the contractor may assess all charges by delivery and not include a storage fee. To do this, just indicate a $0 storage fee when submitting pricing. Price scoring will be determined based on the total per case pricing for storage plus delivery. However, in our past experience, when there is no penalty fee for extended storage (beyond 4 months), some RAs have abused the storage system and left their cases in the warehouse for many months. This poses a problem for the State Agency, because USDA regulations discourage storage of USDA Foods at the warehouse beyond 6 months. Therefore, we would encourage potential bidders to include a nominal extended storage fee for storage beyond 4 months, even if the bidder chose not to asses any charge for the first 4 months of storage. Page 2 of 5

3 Question: Can there be a minimum fee plus a per unit charge? For example, the delivery charge is $1 with a $10 minimum fee. A 12 unit delivery would be $12, a 30 unit delivery would be $30 but any delivery of 10 or less units would be $10. Answer: Yes, this is an acceptable fee structure. Question: We currently deliver to many schools and have not been required to provide fingerprints or background checks. Is this mandatory? Answer: I will need to do some more research into what the Agency of Education regulations are in general. However for the purposes of this contract, background checks and finger printing for delivery drivers are a requirement. This is a new requirement, which we are instituting because of some problems that other states in our region have had recently with delivery drivers and inappropriate conduct on school grounds. Question: On page 6, it says the scoring is on a 100 point scale, but the categories add up to 115 points. Answer: Thanks for catching that. We will revise the RFP to reflect a 115 point scale. Question: Will there be more bidders than are in attendance at the bidders conference? Answer: We have had questions from a number of potential bidders who did not attend the conference, so I expect that there will be a number of bidders. Our goal is to get the best possible pricing and services for Vermont schools, so we hope that there will be a number of bidders. Question: We are new to this process and want to know how the product actually gets paid for and how the money flows. Answer: USDA Foods are part of the federal assistance that USDA provides to school meals programs. The schools receive a cash reimbursement for the meals they serve, but they also receive about $0.25 to $0.30 worth of actual food per meal that they serve. Each year, the schools are told the dollar value (entitlement) that they have to spend on USDA Foods, and they use this entitlement to order from a catalog of available USDA Foods. USDA takes those orders and purchases the food on behalf of the schools and has it shipped to the warehouse. USDA takes care of all of this procurement and pays the food vendors directly. The storage and delivery vendor charges the schools directly for storage and delivery, and the state is never charged by the vendor for any of these services. From the state s perspective, this is a $0 contract, even though it does have a value to the vendor, because the state does not pay the vendor for any of the services. Page 3 of 5

4 Question: How does it work at the end of the School Year? Is there Inventory that carries over? Answer: USDA regulations discourage the state from keeping food in the warehouse longer than 6 months. Because of that, we try to move all the food out of the warehouse by the end of the school year, except for a few items that we reserve for the summer meals programs. Usually, there are 3-4 items for the summer programs, and maybe 50 cases or less of each item so it s a small number of cases that would carry over the summer to supply this program. Because of the regulation on not keeping USDA Foods longer than 6 months, we do encourage vendors to include a nominal extended storage fee for storage after 6 months, to discourage schools from keeping food in the warehouse for more than 4 months. Question: How many Summer sites are there? How does summer work? Answer: The current summer sites are listed at the end of the Appendix. The 11 sites starting with City of Winooski are all Summer sites. In addition, there are a couple of school summer sites that are listed earlier. In general, it s a small number of sites, and they usually only want a one time delivery. I want to add that as far as incoming deliveries, we tend to drain the warehouse at the end of the school year and then schedule many incoming deliveries in August and September to fill it up again. Then there will be some deliveries throughout the year after that, with another heavy period of incoming deliveries in January. Usually, we do not schedule incoming deliveries after April. So incoming deliveries are not evenly divided throughout the year. Question: I see the section about Emergencies and Disasters. It looks like USDA can just come in and take the food in the case of an emergency, and we would not get paid for handling that product, is that true? Answer: Yes. If there is a disaster, USDA can commandeer the USDA Foods and take them to where they are needed. In this case, USDA would handle the shipping of the foods, but the warehouse would not receive any storage or delivery payments. USDA does make an effort to replace the foods, so the warehouse would receive storage and delivery fees for any replacement foods, but not on the original product and replacement is not guaranteed. Vermont has not had any of our food taken for disaster feeding in at least the last two years - if not longer - although we are always asked to provide a current inventory whenever there is an anticipated weather event such as a hurricane or blizzard so that USDA is able to assess where available food is located in case it is needed. Page 4 of 5

5 Question: Who would be subcontractors? Answer: An example of a subcontractor might be if you decided to provide the storage yourself, but subcontract out the actual delivery for all or some of the schools. Question: Accounts receivable are sometimes a problem for us. Would we be able to suspend deliveries to a school if their account was overdue? Answer: That would be acceptable if the school was overdue in paying their storage and delivery fees for USDA Foods. However, if a school had other business with you and you suspended delivery of their USDA Foods because they were late in paying some other, non-usda Foods related bills, then that would not be acceptable. Also, if you did suspend deliveries of USDA Foods due to failure to pay storage and delivery fees, the foods would still belong to USDA the vendor would not be able to seize the foods to pay the fees. Question: What are the parameters for the extended storage fee? Does the state set that or the vendor? Answer: The vendor proposes the amount of the extended storage fee and the time period (per week, per month, etc.) in their proposal. The current vendor is charging $0.25/case per calendar month beyond 4 months of receipt in WBSCM. The state encourages charging a nominal extended storage fee to discourage long-term storage of USDA Foods by the schools. Page 5 of 5