By Kaitlin Durbin
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County jail inmates are once again being promised better food as officials tweak menus to replace “slurry-type” meals and avoid food waste.
The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department recently approved enhanced menus for regular and special dietary meals aimed at providing greater variety and better-quality food that people housed in the jail actually want to eat.
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The changes include more sandwiches and “pour-over” meals instead of the unappealing casseroles that officials say have dominated the menu. The county also asked the vendor to limit beans and remove unfavorable items from the rotation, according to county documents.
Kosher and Halal menus are also being upgraded to prepackaged meals featuring items like chili, beef stroganoff, and sweet and sour chicken, a sample menu shows.
Chief Deputy Nestor Rivera said he initiated the changes after noticing the vendor serving too many “slurry-type” meals and certain sides always going uneaten, like carrots. He wondered if there were other meals and vegetables the vendor, Summit Foods Services, could substitute instead.
“Rather than throw this food away, let’s find something that our residents are going to enjoy, so that we’re not wasting,” he reasoned during a recent interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, with Sheriff Harold Pretel nodding beside him. “These are things that we’re going to look at and continue to tweak until we reach that harmonious point. We want our residents to be well taken care of, well fed.”
Eventually, Rivera said he hopes to add burger or pizza nights to the menu as well. Better food leads to happier inmates, which results in happier staff all the way up the chain, he said.
But it also costs more.
The changes raise the cost by 18 cents to $3.39 per regular meal, based on an average inmate population around 1,500. It marks the second change – and price increase – since Summit took over food service in January, following an earlier amendment in April.
Halal and Kosher meals, which were once billed at the same price point as the regular meals, will now cost $7.21 each. Rivera could not say how many of the meals are being distributed on a regular basis but described it as a small number.
Despite those increases, county records say the changes won’t push food costs beyond the jail’s three-year, $18 million contract with Summit. At least not yet. Rivera noted that while the company has worked to stay within budget so far and provide better food at the same time, he didn’t deny that a request for more funding could be necessary in the future.
“Sometimes there’s a cost,” Rivera said, matter-of-factly. “When we had Trinity (Food Service), every tray was coming back, and it was just going into the garbage disposal. So, I’d rather spend a nickel and watch that food be eaten as it should, versus having to throw it away.”
Summit took over operations in December, after widespread criticism of Trinity’s meals, which were described as “absolutely terrible” and so inedible that corrections officers complained serving it to inmates placed their own safety at risk.
Since the transition, food reviews have improved. In February, County Executive Chris Ronayne posted a photo on social media of himself and other officials sampling jail food, calling it “a major improvement.” Rivera said jail staff continue to test meals periodically to make sure they remain up to standard.
“It’s good food,” he said. “We’re not going backwards; we’re going to continue to improve.”
The menu upgrades come as part of a broader push to improve conditions at the jail. Officials also recently replaced 2,000 mattresses, an upgrade Rivera said was met with applause from inmates and resulted in a “total mood change.”
“These are the things that we need for a better Cuyahoga County Corrections Center all the way around,” he said.
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