No food on ferries? It's possible

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter

	ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Eileen McKinley Sackman checks her arrangement of freshly made burgers and chips at the grill yesterday on the Bainbridge Island-Seattle run of the Washington State Ferries.
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Planning a trip on a Washington state ferry after Jan. 1? Better eat before you board because clam chowder, popcorn, deli sandwiches, beer, fresh coffee and all other galley offerings might disappear in the new year.

Unless the state can find a company willing to assume the contract that provides food and drinks, food service on the boats will stop at the end of this year.

"There's a great possibility the galleys are going to go dark," said Pat Patterson, spokeswoman for the Washington State Ferries. She said no bidders responded to a request for a new company to run the ferry-food concession, not even Sodexho, the current provider.

About 130 employees with Sodexho were given pink slips last week and told their jobs would end Dec. 31.

"Sodexho will end its operations, and Sodexho employment of individuals will end," the company said in a memo given to employees and distributed to passengers on the state ferries yesterday.

The ferry contract ended last month, but the state negotiated an extension until the end of next month.

Patterson said the ferry system put out a request for bidders in September. Under the current contract, which earned the ferry system $1.1 million this year, the company pays the ferry system 10.5 percent of its sales. In the extension the state agreed to lower that to 7 percent for the rest of the year.

In the new contract put out for bids the state was asking for 11 percent of the gross sales for onboard food service. Patterson said the state went back to Sodexho and asked it to continue food service for another three months, but the company wanted the state to pay $250,000.

"We said no," she said. "We're cutting service and raising fares and then pay someone to provide food? We're not going there."

What the ferry system did was take the elements of the onboard concession contract Sodexho holds, which includes food, beverages, vending machines and games, and bid them separately. McDonald's, which has a restaurant at Colman Dock, bid on fast food at the terminal, and there were bids on games and vending machines on the boats.

But Patterson said the ferry system didn't get any bids on the onboard food service even though a half-dozen companies looked at it.

"This tells us our business model is outdated," she said. She said when the state asked companies why they didn't bid the 10-year length of the contract and concerns about the labor situation were cited.

The galley workers belong to the Inland Boatmen's Union and are paid between $9.94 and $14.50 an hour. Whether a new contractor would have to hire IBU members is unclear, Patterson said, and the state has asked for an opinion from the Attorney General's Office. She said the state assumes the workers would be unionized but not necessarily with the IBU.

"We don't believe a company is legally obligated to assume a union contract," she said.

But that doesn't sit well with the IBU.

"They are not going to put nonunion people on our boats," said Dave Freiboth, national president of the IBU.

"We're still continuing to put pressure where we need to try to get the Department of Transportation to back off and work this thing out with us. We're going to do all we legally can to stop this."

Don O'Connell of Poulsbo has worked on the ferry for four years and received his pink slip last week.

"People are panicking," he said. "I'll find something else, but a lot of people are 50 and older and are single parents, so it will be hard for them to get the kind of job that pays benefits."

Leslie Aun, spokeswoman for Sodexho, said her company couldn't afford to keep the contract without concessions from the state.

"We found it very difficult, if not impossible, to make any money," she said. "We're a business and need to operate profitably. We'd like to continue the relationship, but that's not feasible on the financial basis."

She said Sodexho is the nation's largest food-service provider and has many other contracts in the Seattle area, such as Seattle Pacific University, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center and Safeco Insurance. She said it's possible some of the displaced workers can find work at another Sodexho site.

The state has contracted out galley service since 1967, said Freiboth, who started in the galley himself. "This is personal for me," he said.

"The rumor is that they are going to rip out the galleys and put in vending machines," said Richard Kuntz, a ferry commuter from Southworth. "That means no more Ivar's clam chowder, fresh popcorn, breakfast sandwiches, deli sandwiches, fresh-brewed coffee. Nothing.

"These ferry workers became our friends and it's a humbug to get a pink slip. Our hearts went out to them," Kuntz said. "It won't be the same thing walking up to a vending machine."

Patterson said the state does not intend to replace all food services with vending machines.

She said the state plans to put out another request-for-proposals within the next two weeks and, in the meantime, hopes to have coffee carts and food in the ferry terminals for passengers. She said she hopes that won't become a union issue.

Meanwhile, Patterson said the state has to look at its food contract and maybe make some tough choices, such as providing food only on certain routes or certain times of the year.

"We believe there is a market, but there will be a period of time when you won't get food out of the galley."

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

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