Taste of the pacific Bay Area company takes over as LACCD food vendor

VANESSA

Arredondo

News Editor @V_anana

Pacific Dining, LACCD’s districtwide food vendor, has taken over the operation of the cafeterias at five colleges, including Pierce, and provided food truck and vending services to the district during its 90day trial period at the start of the semester.

“The acquisition of the LACCD district was great,” Pacific Dining manager Brian Robertson said. “We got all nine of those, five of which already have cafeterias. A few more cafeterias are being built.”

According to Robertson, West LA College, Valley College, City College, Pierce College and East LA College, all opened their cafeterias within the first two weeks of the semester.

Vice President of Administrative Services Rolf Schleicher said the new food vendors have been very well received by the Pierce community.

“So far, the new vendor has been very favorable,” Schleicher said.

“We have heard good things from the students, faculty and staff about the assortment of foods because they have opened up all the bays in the cafeteria.”

Last semester, LACCD chose San Jose-based Pacific Dining as the outside vendor that would be in charge of providing cafeteria, mobile and vending services to all nine colleges. The vendor signed a ten-year contract with the district.

The acquisition forced out the Hot Sauce Truck and Falafelicious Catering owner Ofir Bass, who had taken over the cafeteria just months prior.

“I believe they chose us primarily because of our experience and our background,” Robertson said. “We opened a lot of cafeterias, and we’ve never lost an account in those 27 years, which I think reflects pretty well. We love to open up cafeterias, or take over ones and improve them.”

According to Robertson, having one provider for all nine colleges is beneficial for the school system and provides consistency.

However, Bass and Hot Sauce Truck owner Rafael De La Fuente disagree and said that small businesses are being run out by big corporations that will not provide the same level of attention to its consumers.

Bass sold his restaurant earlier this year to focus his complete attention on the Pierce cafeteria. Bass’ fatherin-law and businessman Leon Hasson said that they have given up. They sold the food truck and the restaurant and have left the food service business.

Walker said WHHO has been working with Pierce for 30 years, and it has fought against any venture that threatens the agricultural nature of the college.

“We have a position that the farm will always remain a farm and will not be used for anything other than that,” Walker said. “It will remain an agricultural institution, and we will fight that to the end. Our organization opposed anything that was going to go on there because, basically, once the camel gets his nose under the tent, then all of it begins to go.”

Though members of the community expressed concern for the farmland’s fate, Berger said the property had alway been intended to be used for educational purposes.

“To a lot of people on the outside, you see just land. And you don't see anything on it, and people think, ‘Oh, I can put something on it,’” Berger said. “We see instruction. We see laboratory space. We see training for our students.”

Pierce College will begin modifications to the farmland, revamping and adding to the Pierce Agricultural Program beginning with the arboretum project set to start construction phases in 2019. The arboretum on the southeast side of campus along Brahma Drive will be renovated to be up to industry

“We are done. We vacated the premises because they terminated our lease,” Hasson said. “We sold our restaurant the beginning of this year to focus fulltime on Pierce because it was very busy and growing. We sold

-Rolf

that business to put all of our attention on Pierce, and we got screwed.”

According to De La Fuente, the Hot Sauce Truck was offered a contract to continue providing food services on campus, but he said the stipulations of the agreement were too inconvenient for the company.

To continue working at Pierce, De La Fuente would have to drive 12 hours a day back and forth to pick up and leave the food truck at Pacific Dining’s commissary.

“I told the company that I would love to work with them, but it was impossible for me. I don’t blame the company; they have to make their money,” De La Fuente said. “If there was another way, I would have loved to stay and work at Pierce. I was happy there. The students loved me, but this was a district decision. The school wanted to work with me, but the district wanted nothing to do with us.”

Not allowed on campus anymore, the Hot Sauce Truck parked outside on Victory Boulevard and Winnetka Avenue for the first few days of the semester, but moved its services because business was slow.

“It’s understandable,” De La Fuente said. “The students couldn’t come out because they don’t have time, and they have class. I made too little out there, so I had to go somewhere else. I’m on streets around here and there.” standards. Horticulture 4900 was the original base of the program, but is now deemed too small and outdated for agricultural educational purposes, in addition to being unsafe due to sustaining earthquake damage.

Robertson said that he is aware that the food trucks on Pierce had their leases terminated and Bass was forced to relinquish the cafeteria, but he does not know enough about it to comment.

Schleicher said that the budget for the renovations and the new buildings are coming from Measure J. The Agricultural Science Building has $8,734,903 and the Agricultural Education Building has $9,385,216.48 budget and an additional $6,600,000 from a district wide contingency.

In the distant future, Berger said, Pierce hopes to build a community area where residents can view the students’ produce and work, and perhaps sell some homegrown products.

“You all have a priority for the agricultural program and so do we,” Berger told WHHO Wednesday. “We have no intention of getting rid of the program. We want to take that piece of land off of Victory and De Soto and bring it back into the instructional program, where students will learn how to do food production, learn how to use state-of-the-art technology, so that they can go out into the workforce or transfer.”

Walker said that the property must remain an agricultural land available to the students and the community, but there will always be people that oppose that.

“There will never be a time when

However, Robertson said, he is excited to contract with Pierce.

“Pierce is one of the busiest. It was awesome the first and second week,” Robertson said. “It’s crammed in there. There are long lines, and it's been really good. We are really excited about Pierce.”

Pacific Dining began operations 27 years ago in San Jose. According to Robertson, Mercury News was the first cafeteria the company provided food services to.

What began as a small business, expanded as more community college accounts were acquired in Northern California. The first community college cafeterias served by Pacific Dining were in San Mateo County.

Pacific Dining moved its company to Southern California about three years ago, Robertson said. The first cafeteria it ran in the region was the College of the Desert in Palm Springs.

“Southern California has been a goldmine,” Robertson said. “From there, the company has grown considerably and taken off. We have a lot of accounts here. We have given a lot of people jobs.”

Pacific Dining contracted LA Mobile to provide food truck services on campus and First Class Vending to provide vending services.

“Something we don’t traditionally do, but we did in this case because we thought it could be a lot more beneficial for the school, is we subcontracted vending and mobile operations,” Robertson said. “These companies provide vending and food truck services to all the colleges in the district.”

According to Robertson, under the contract with LACCD, Pacific Dining recommends a vending service, but a college can choose whichever vendor they’d like.

“Colleges have the option, as we’ve been told, to look at vending that fits their needs,” Schleicher said. “It’s preferable to go with Pacific Dining and their affiliates, but it’s also in our best interest that we get the best vending machines for our campus.” varredondo.roundupnews@gmail.com a developer will go by that property and say, ‘I’m glad it’s a farm,’” Walker said. “They will always go by that property and say, “How can I get my hands on that?’ It’s just the nature of the beast that floats through the community.”

According to Associate Vice President of Administrative Services Larry Kraus, food services will generally remain the same. However, all catering services will need to be approved in writing by Pacific Dining. Kraus said that this will be implemented so that the college can earn back a percentage of the orders to maintain lower pricing for food and drinks sold.

To quell the concerns of the Woodland Hills community, Schleicher suggested WHHO make a taskforce to keep in touch which projects going on at Pierce. He said they already have a Bond Oversight Committee that meets monthly, but the formation of a task force can provide additional communications to the interested parties.

“I think there's a lot of misinformation going around. And I'm willing to cut through that because we need to have a relationship that is transparent,” Schleicher said. “We just want to make people aware of progress, and they should be aware of our progress in our strategic plan.”

Schleicher acknowledged the community's concern that a big business would move into the space, removing Pierce’s connection to its original agricultural roots.

“There's more than running events that are enterprise oriented. Could I make more money using enterprises in there? Absolutely. But that's not what we are here for.” varredondo.roundupnews@gmail.com rlove.roundupnews@gmail.com