Cuban rice, chicken with mushroom sauce, hake in sauce, potato omelette or lentils will replace pizzas, nuggets, ham and cheese rolls or sanwiches of different flavors. The Community of Madrid has closed this Thursday the agreement with the companies of catering of the schools that will replace the menus of Telepizza, Rodilla and Viena Chaplains and that will begin to provide services to minors who have Minimum Insertion Income (RMI) next Monday. The conversations between the Food Service Federation, which includes all the food companies catering, and the administration has lasted exactly one week, just enough to close the fringes of how, when and who will receive the service. Because there is something new in this second round of menu deliveries: instead of the 11,500 minors that were on the list, they will now be from Monday 8,107.
The agreement contemplates the delivery of the menus through 162 distribution points that will be enabled in public schools that will be opened administratively. This method will allow different corners, such as the Madrid highlands, to be reached more efficiently, and puts 12 collective catering companies to work. “It is going to be able to remove at least 162 people from the ERTE, who will be at those points, in addition to kitchen staff and our suppliers. We are happy ”, María López, corporate director of legal services and institutional relations of Ausolan, of the Mondragón group, one of the companies of catering who normally elaborates menus in educational centers and one of the people who has been present in the negotiations with the Community.
The service will begin next Monday and will last, at least, until June 19, developing a menu program that will ensure the composition, variety and balance characteristics that schoolchildren usually received during the regular course. “We will offer 90% of basal menus and 10% multi-allergenic”, stressed López.
What has changed so that catering companies can now provide the service? “Nothing”, has settled. “We then made a proposal in which we put 60 distribution points, but if they had told us that they had to be 162 as we would have done now. We do it now just as we could have done before ”, he assured.
The good news has arrived this Thursday at noon through email received by several companies. It was the beginning of an agreement. They had to answer if they could get the job done, that is, batch menu development. For example, Comedores Blanco, a medium-sized company of around 1,000 workers, will prepare the menu for 600 diners. Gastronomics, will have another batch of 500 menus. And so one by one until reaching 12 companies, each with a similar batch to reach 8,107 on the list of vulnerable minors.
There was not much time left. Monday was just around the corner. Each company had to start organizing. Among the conditions to be considered was the delivery of the menus at certain points. Comedores Blanco will have it somewhat easier than Gastronómics, for example, since the first company will deliver the menus to two points in the capital (two schools) and the second will have to travel to 18 north of Madrid. In Buitrago de Lozoya, for example, there is only one diner with the dining grant. “But we didn’t care,” explained López. “Any child who had the need was willing to solve any stumbling block for the menu to arrive.” Each company has gone to work and, therefore, there have been no problems. “The Community is the one that establishes in the end which companies do the service, but we as a federation have put it on the table and have requested that two criteria be taken into account: the proximity of the central table and that the distribution of lots among the companies be as balanced as possible. ” Late this Thursday an agreement has been reached.
Thus ends and ends one of the controversies that has led the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso for the feeding of minors. Social, political and media pressure got the president to announce last Thursday that healthy menus would return this Monday. Just a few days before, the Madrid government had announced that it would extend contracts with fast food companies until the end of the school year.
For the Food Service Spain Federation and for the Madrid employers, Food Service Madrid, the agreement reached with the Community of Madrid means recovering an activity, for a sector specialized in the provision of this type of services, which has the approval and the structures necessary to comply with a menu programming designed to ensure the balance and safety and quality characteristics required by school-age students.
For Javier Arenillas, Secretary General of Food Service Madrid and Food Service Spain, “the agreement reached involves recovering the provision of particularly sensitive services, for a highly specialized business sector and with quality standards at the level of the most advanced in Europe . We are aware of the exceptional nature of the moment and of the decisions taken and, therefore, we thank the Community of Madrid and the companies that have facilitated this return to greater normality that will benefit a group that really needs it. ”
Puchero in Toledo and ‘nuggets’ in Madrid: this is how autonomies feed the most vulnerable children
Tour of different Spanish homes whose minors have a dining scholarship. Regional governments have faced the same problem with very different solutions. Click to continue reading.
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