UNSPSC 50401910: Cylindra beets

The variety of beets known as cylindra beets

UNSPSC 50401910 Cylindra beets, a Commodity code, encompasses fresh produce items supplied to state and local institutions, primarily school districts and child nutrition programs. Recent solicitations show that state and local procurement bodies are buying fresh vegetables—including cylindra beets and related root vegetables—as part of comprehensive produce contracts serving school meal programs, senior services, and institutional food operations. Cylindra beets appear incidentally within broader fresh produce line-item solicitations rather than as standalone, specialized procurements; the recent opportunities block names carrots, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and generalized fresh produce across numerous school districts, state departments, and county child nutrition programs, but none isolates cylindra beets as a distinct bid line item.

Issuing bodies span school districts (Madison Metropolitan, Bartow County, Dougherty County, Bryan County, Liberty County, Muscogee County, Savannah-Chatham County, Henry County, Glynn County, McAllen ISD, Northside ISD, Austin ISD, Douglas County, Hillsborough County, and others across multiple states), state departments (Texas, Georgia), county boards of education, Head Start agencies, senior services (San Antonio), and institutional consumers including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. School districts dominate the market, with fresh produce contracts tied to the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and the USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program; these districts typically issue RFPs, RFQs, and ITBs on an annual or multi-year cycle. Recent activity concentrates in Texas and Georgia, with active secondary markets in Florida, Missouri, Connecticut, and other states. Douglas County Schools conducted a cooperative purchasing vehicle (GEC Buying Cooperative) aggregating demand across 30 Georgia school districts; a similar multi-district cooperative structure appears in the Meriden Public Schools procurement. Evaluation criteria consistently weight price (often 30–50 points), product quality and freshness, on-time delivery reliability, and compliance with USDA Buy American and food safety standards including HACCP certification. Local-sourcing and farm-of-origin preferences appear in multiple Georgia and Texas school district RFPs, with preferences for produce grown within 200–400 miles and pricing incentives for organic or Texas-grown items.

The single TDCJ carrot procurement (Bid IW241979-A, posted April 7, 2026, due March 17, 2026) specified 1,200 tons (2.4 million pounds) with Texas service-disabled veteran and in-state producer set-asides under 34 TAC Rule 20.306, indicating that TDCJ canning operations represent an institutional bulk buyer but with compressed timelines and highly specific commodity specifications. Most recent opportunities show little direct activity under the cylindra-beet Commodity code itself; cylindra beets, if procured at all, would appear as a single line item within a comprehensive fresh-vegetable or produce specification sheet rather than driving its own solicitation. Vendors pursuing this code should expect to compete on school nutrition platform procurements and institutional bulk-vegetable contracts where produce is sourced line-by-line alongside carrots, potatoes, and other root vegetables, with awards frequently made on a lowest-responsive-bidder basis and delivery consolidated weekly or twice-weekly to multiple school sites or state warehouses. Geographic preference, local-sourcing incentives, and certified organic pricing multipliers are now standard evaluation factors in school district produce procurements across the South and Southwest.