MOORHEAD—Concordia’s Contract Services has recently signed one-year contracts with the YWCA Cass Clay and the Salvation Army.
“Contract Services started about 20 plus years ago providing meals,” said Jason Giffey, Associate Director of Dining Services.
Contract Services works with people and organizations to provide meals daily.
“They give us the numbers, we get them hot and nutritious meals delivered to their site,” said Giffey.
The YWCA had reached out back in April needing help with meals since they were struggling with a culinary team.
“Smaller areas might have about one culinary person who works part time,” said Giffey.
When someone would leave or need to have time off at the YWCA on the culinary team, Concordia would fill in.
“We came in to help support when they were out on culinary people,” said Giffey.
After working with Concordia for a few months, the YWCA made the decision to sign a one-year contract with Contract Services for meals.
“It might be a week here or two weeks here this summer, it was as if they were testing us out and seeing if they liked what we were doing and I like to think we won them over,” said Giffey.
The same happened with the Salvation Army who reached out to Contract Services in the summer. On Nov. 11, they signed a one-year contract with Concordia.
The meals are all forecasted two weeks out. The Contract Services team designs a menu for a few weeks and the food is ordered. Once the food arrives at Concordia, it is prepared by Concordia’s culinary team and loaded onto the Concordia trucks. The food is delivered the same day that it is prepared and is served to people within a few hours of being delivered.
“We deliver 40 meals every day for the YWCA,” said Giffey.
At the moment, all Contract Services’ customers are non-profit organizations.
“We are so proud of it. It is just another way we can help out the community,” said Giffey.
Some of the main customers are the Salvation Army, YWCA, YMCA, Clay Meals on Wheels, Cass County Meals on Wheels and Trinity Head Start.
“All of these (non-profits) are set in place and they have people there they are helping and we are providing this one component, the meal. Being well nourished helps everybody,” said Giffey. “And we can provide that for them.”
