Thunder MTN Catering Inc.

Thunder Mountain Catering Inc., a veteran-owned small business based in Boise, Idaho, operates as a prime contractor delivering mobile food services and catering support to the federal government, with particular focus on wildland firefighting and emergency response operations across the western United States. The company competes predominantly on a small-business set-aside footing (Total Small Business designations on its newest vehicle and multiple National Guard awards) and full-and-open, depending on the ordering component. Thunder Mountain Catering is woman-owned and Black American-owned in addition to veteran status; however, set-aside posture on recent awards shows the vendor competing under small-business categories rather than minority or women-owned set-asides across the bulk of its portfolio.

Customer concentration is extreme and reflects specialized expertise in federal wildfire logistics. The National Interagency Fire Center—the Forest Service's fire and aviation management arm—anchors the portfolio: 65 awards worth $165.1 million in combined potential value account for 38 percent of all recent awards and 80 percent of total potential dollars. Forest Service Regional operations (R5 Pacific Southwest, R1 Northern, R4 Intermountain, R6 Pacific Northwest) collectively deliver another 62 awards worth $34.8 million, bringing Forest Service concentration to over 96 percent of combined potential value across 139 of 173 total awards. Secondary customers include the Idaho, Oregon, and Utah Army National Guard, with roughly $900 thousand in small BPA call work for catered meals. Across both rankings, the National Interagency Fire Center dominates both volume and dollars—a single-customer dependency that is strategically narrow but operationally deep.

Thunder Mountain Catering holds two parent vehicles: the Forest Service National Mobile Food Service Unit 2025-2029 IDIQ (a $45 million Total Small Business multiple-award vehicle awarded July 1, 2025, with 16 task orders worth $17.5 million already placed as of late June 2026) and an older $250 thousand Call When Needed (CWN) Mobile Food Service Units blanket purchase agreement running through May 2032. The bulk of the vendor's delivery orders—109 task orders worth $51.8 million—flow through an Indefinite Delivery Contract numbered 12024B20T2519, which represents work under the prior generation of the Forest Service's national catering vehicle and is now winding down as the 2025-2029 vehicle ramps up. Multiple Army National Guard BPAs for catered meals rounds out the vehicle footprint.

Work is performed across a distributed geography. Recent delivery orders (the 10 awarded between June 17 and June 25, 2026) specify places of performance in Craigmont and Toppenish, Washington; Flagstaff and a region-3 site in Arizona; and Boise, Idaho. Earlier 2025 awards cite performance in Medford, Oregon; Helena and Missoula, Montana; Clovis and other California locations; and multiple Utah and Nevada fire-incident sites. The portfolio shows Thunder Mountain rotating crews and mobile catering units across incident-driven locations, typical of federal wildfire logistics contracting.

Activity trajectory shows a sharp decline in award velocity. The vendor received 38 awards in 2022 and 42 in 2023 (80 awards over two years), dropped to 20 in 2024, 16 in 2025, and only 5 in the first half of 2026. This trajectory reflects both the cyclical nature of fire season (2022-2023 were historically active fire years) and the vendor's transition onto the new 2025-2029 vehicle. Within the next twenty-four months, the vendor faces recompete exposure on awards carrying ultimate completion dates ending December 31, 2024 and 2025—a large share of the older vehicle's ceiling value. The older 12024B20T2519 contract vehicle is winding down in favor of the July 2025 award, a structural shift that creates both recompete risk (on the older vehicle's remaining ceiling) and growth opportunity (the new vehicle's $45 million ceiling and competitive ordering process).

SCI-reported federal service-contract invoicing totaled $43.2 million across FY2022–FY2024, with annual invoicing stable near $14.3–$14.5 million per year. The FY2023 spike to 23.6 FTEs reflects the active fire-season peak; FY2022 and FY2024 saw lower reported FTE counts (5.4 and 5.7, respectively), suggesting the SCI data captures only the larger, above-threshold service contracts and undershoots the actual operational workforce deployed across smaller task orders and incident-to-incident assignments. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable work ranged from a 10th percentile of $306.68 per hour to a median of $1,058.30 per hour and a 90th percentile of $1,666.54 per hour, reflecting a mix of labor tiers from field catering staff to supervisory personnel. The vendor operates with zero subcontractor engagement across SCI-reportable prime records, delivering meals and mobile food services through its own labor and equipment.

Capability framing is operationally specific: Thunder Mountain Catering designs, prepares, and delivers hot and cold meals to federal personnel in remote and austere environments, leveraging a fleet of mobile kitchens and food service units to support incident personnel engaged in wildland firefighting, all-hazard emergency response, disaster relief, and fire preparedness operations. Representative work includes a $4.528 million delivery order awarded May 23, 2026 by the National Interagency Fire Center for designated dispatch points supporting national mobile food service unit operations through December 31, 2030; a $3.979 million order from Region 5 (Pacific Southwest) awarded August 28, 2025; and a $2.984 million delivery order from Region 4 (Intermountain) awarded August 11, 2024. The vendor competes as a sole prime on fixed-price delivery orders with economic price adjustment clauses, performing end-to-end meal preparation on-site at incident locations and managing all labor, equipment, materials, and logistics independently.