City boots Aramark’s bid at Baltimore Convention Center 

Posted: 7:29 pm Wed, November 4, 2009
By Robbie Whelan
Daily Record Business Writer

The company that has provided food and drink for events at the Baltimore Convention Center for the last decade has been disqualified from the bidding on a contract that would have kept it doing business with the city for another seven years.

City officials said Wednesday that Aramark Corp., the national concessionaire leading a team bidding on the $11.5 million contract, inappropriately changed the terms of the city’s request for bids.

Instead, the Board of Estimates awarded the contract to a team led by Stamford, Conn.-based Centerplate Inc., a company that under the name Service America Corp. provided concession services for the Baltimore Convention Center in the 1980s and 1990s.

Outside food and drink are not permitted at meetings in the Baltimore Convention Center, and for the last 10 years, Aramark has provided all catering services there. Their contract ends December 21.

Centerplate and Aramark regularly vie for food and beverage contracts at convention centers, arenas and large public events such as the Olympic Games. Centerplate officials could not be reached for comment.

“Aramark wants to turn this process on its head,” said Joseph D. Mazza, the city’s assistant purchasing agent, speaking before the board. “[It] wanted to issue its own [request for proposals] and invite the city to negotiate.”

Under the city’s procurement laws, all contracts for goods and services worth $5,000 or more must be advertised through a competitive bidding process, and bids must comply with the specifications of an RFP, including the participation of minority and women-owned subcontractors, in order to be considered “responsive.”

Peggy Daidakis, the convention center’s director, said that Aramark earned about 72 percent of the gross revenue from events under its old contract, with the rest going to the city. By 2007, she said, total gross revenues from events were about $10 million yearly, but business dropped off soon after that when the economy soured.

“Once the bids came in and were opened, it’s up to the Bureau of Purchases and Law [Department] to evaluate them, and there’s nothing I can do to intervene or discuss it,” she said of the bid.

Mazza said after the meeting that the Aramark bid changed certain provisions of the city’s request and included language telling the city to take it or leave it.

“They said in many places in their bid that their bid had to be accepted in full, and that’s a conditional bid,” he said. “It’s well established in state law that conditional bids are unresponsive.”

But Robert Fulton Dashiell, a lawyer representing Aramark’s team, which was known as BCC Catering Joint Venture and included local catering companies Class Act Catering By Jim, Classic Catering People and Martin’s Caterers, said that Centerplate’s bid was also unresponsive, and that it had been understood that the city was prepared to negotiate the terms of the contract with whomever the winning bidder turned out to be.

“It’s one thing when you lose fair and square, but it’s another thing to not even get in the game because some bureaucrat gets pissed and ignores anything and everything about you. That’s basically what happened,” he said.

Dashiell acknowledged that his clients’ bid had included conditional language, and that it had adjusted certain clauses related to insurance claims and revenue projections for the convention center. He also said the bid had included language that made the company’s willingness to negotiate these conditions clear.

In May, Rite Aid Corp., which brought a $6 million conference to Baltimore in 2008, cancelled  its annual meeting for 2009 after posting major losses. Dashiell said this made his client question whether the Baltimore Convention Center’s projected revenues, which are the basis for Aramark’s food and beverage revenues, were accurate.

At the board meeting Wednesday, former state Sen. Barbara A. Hoffman, who represented Baltimore City and Baltimore County, testified on Aramark’s behalf, saying that the company should be recognized for its contributions to the community, including an employee volunteer program in East Baltimore in July.