NIGP 380: Foods: Dairy Products, Fresh

NIGP 380 Foods: Dairy Products, Fresh is a Class code under which state and local governments procure fluid milk, flavored milk, yogurt, cheese, butter, cream products, and related dairy items to support school nutrition programs, institutional food service, and public agency operations. Recent solicitations show school districts as the primary buyers, with representative procurements spanning single-district RFPs to multi-jurisdictional cooperative purchasing agreements. The Stockton Unified School District issued ITB 26-17 for USDA-compliant dairy products including milk, juices, and cheese in multiple forms, due June 26, 2026, seeking to serve the National School Lunch Program across 43 school sites. The Pinellas County School District solicited sealed electronic bids on June 11, 2026, for milk, dairy, and juice products under a two-year contract valued at approximately $22.5 million to supply 117 facilities. New Haven Board of Education requested proposals on June 23, 2026, under RFP 2026HYRFPCNH366 for dairy and juice delivery across summer camp, schools, and central kitchen locations, with a mandatory 25% MBE/WBE participation goal and annual service to 17,500–19,000 meals per day. Institutional buyers including state departments, detention facilities, and supported living centers also appear regularly—the Texas Health and Human Services Commission sought snack and beverage products for the Mexia State Supported Living Center (IFB HHS0017722, due July 31, 2026), and the Michigan Department of Technology, Management, & Budget awarded a contract for milk and dairy products to Prairie Farms Inc. to serve Veteran Homes and the State Police Training Academy.

Geographic activity concentrates in Texas, Florida, California, Connecticut, and other major school-district states, with notable recent opportunities posted from Klein ISD and Northside ISD in Texas, the City of Meriden and New Haven in Connecticut, Stockton and Conejo Valley in California, and Pinellas County in Florida. The code sees sustained activity through both direct school district RFPs and ITBs and statewide cooperative purchasing vehicles—the State of Utah Division of Purchasing issued a five-year bulk-order cooperative contract for dairy products excluding milk (SB26-8, due June 4, 2026), and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reopened a statewide K-12 school nutrition products contract (GRO42, bids due August 26, 2026) incorporating produce, groceries, and locally sourced foods. Evaluation criteria across recent solicitations emphasize cost (typically 25–45 percent weight), service capability and delivery reliability (20–30 percent), product quality and compliance with USDA and state nutrition standards (15–25 percent), and vendor qualifications and experience (10–25 percent). Buy American provisions requiring domestic commodities or products processed in the United States with at least 51 percent domestic agricultural ingredients appear consistently. Contract terms typically run one year with renewal options spanning two to five years, and pricing often ties to commodity indices—milk to the Class I bulk milk price or Federal Milk Order, other dairy to the Producer Price Index or Consumer Price Index—with adjustments capped or subject to documented justification. No significant incumbent vendors are named in recent solicitations, and cooperative purchasing vehicles routinely award to multiple vendors by line item or geography to optimize costs.