School Food Authority Survey III on Supply Chain Disruption and Student Participation

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Research and Data

Research Reports

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Final Report (644.66 KB)

Key Findings

Almost all (95%) of school food authorities (SFAs) reported at least one supply-chain related challenge during school year (SY) 2023-24.

However, there are signs of improvement from SY 2022-23:

Compared with SY 2022–23, SFAs were less likely to report increased overall program costs, increased staff stress or workload, reduced student participation, and difficulty complying with meal pattern requirements in SY 2023–24.
One notable exception: SFAs were more likely to report increased labor costs as a challenge (40% of SFAs in SY 2023-24, up from 31% in SY 2022-23).

Bar chart showing the top 5 challenges reported by SFAs in sy 2023-24 and compares to sy 2022-23. The most common challenge was high food costs, with only a slight decrease of 2 percentage points from 2022-23 to 2023-24. The largest decreases were in reporting "incomplete orders with missing items" and the "high cost or limited availability of food service materials" as challenges. There was an increase in reporting "high labor costs" as a challenge.

SFAs are using various strategies to address challenges:

Almost one third (32%) of SFAs increased their use of scratch cooking.
Over one in five SFAs (21%) increased local food purchases.

You can explore key findings over time and by SFA characteristic using a new interactive data visualization.

Why did we do this study?

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted school meal operations and has contributed to lasting supply chain issues affecting the cost and availability of food and labor. We developed a survey series to get timely and up-to-date information from school food authorities (SFAs) about ongoing supply chain challenges and their impacts on school meal operations.

This report includes findings from the third survey in this series on SFA supply chain disruptions. The first School Food Authority Survey on Supply Chain Disruptions from SY 2021-22 was published in March 2022 and a second survey from SY 2022-23 was published in July 2023.

In February 2025, a fourth survey in this series will be sent to SFAs to fill out for SY 2024-25.

How did we do this study?

A 20-minute online questionnaire sent to all SFAs operating child nutrition programs in schools during SY 2023-24. The response rate for the survey was 71% with SFAs from all states and territories responding. The results were then weighted to be representative of 100% of SFAs.

The complete dataset will be available for download on Ag Data Commons in early January 2025