After a roughly 30-year partnership with the food service company Sodexo, LT has entered into a five-year contract, effective at the start of the 2025-2026 school year, with Quest: a company currently facing misconduct allegations by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), Superintendent Dr. Brian Waterman said. 

“We are confident that Quest will be able to continue to provide a high-quality food program for our students, and our number one commitment, first and foremost, is our students,” Waterman said. “If [Quest is] unable to fulfill its obligations, as with any vendor, we will work diligently to ensure that our students continue to have access to a high-quality food service program. Most importantly, we, at LT, experienced none of the misconduct that is being alleged elsewhere–we have been very clear about that.”

Back in May, LT’s Board of Education (BOE) unanimously approved Quest after six months of reviewing and questioning numerous companies put forth by the administration’s recommendations, BOE Vice President Tim Albores said. In the end, the three providers that the board debated were Lombard-based Quest, OrganicLife, and the school’s previous service, Sodexo. 

“We really had a desire for our food service provider to innovate, and we felt like there was an amazing opportunity for growth in this area at LT,” Waterman said. “Secondly, we have this brand new cafeteria opening at SC, and it felt like an amazing opportunity to see what other companies might envision for that space.”

What pushed Quest to the top was its proposal to increase student participation levels and expand meal options for those who qualify for free or reduced lunches, Albores said. Quest’s big initiative to put the students first has led them to prioritize an adaptive menu in response to students’ preferences. The providers’ focus on offering a wider variety of healthier lunches to free or reduced-price students compared to Sodexo, along with the assurance that meal pricing for everyone wouldn’t increase, were important factors in the decision, Albores said.

“One feature that Quest proposed for our new cafeteria at SC is to have a location where, at the end of the day, kids who have sports or other activities can grab from an array of healthy food choices to go,” Albores said. “Quest also proposed the development of a mobile ordering app, which is exciting.”

Leading up to their final decision, the BOE invited the providers to meetings to state their cases and conducted a student taste-testing competition. Of the three, OrganicLife had the best ratings, closely followed by Quest, with Sodexo having the lowest student approval by far. The taste-testing group consisted of 30 to 40 members of the LT Student Advisory Council back in April, Waterman said.

“We all felt very comfortable not choosing Organic Life because the difference in rating was not as extraordinary as it was between Quest and Sodexo,” Albores said. “If there had been a huge gap, there would have been further discussion.”

The BOE’s choice of Quest as the new food provider indeed felt right until the news about the company’s relationship with North Shore School District 112 in Highland Park broke. 

According to the La Grange Patch, North Shore also chose Quest earlier this year to replace OrganicLife, but had to revert to OrganicLife one week before the start of school at the order of the ISBE. The change was a result of OrganicLife’s protest to the ISBE about Quest’s alleged misconduct with North Shore. The alleged misconduct involves a top executive offering Chicago Cubs tickets to the school’s chief finance official, who declined the offer during the process of working on a new food contract. Quest has denied any misconduct and now faces potential inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the nation’s school meal programs, at the ISBE’s request.

“We do not anticipate seeing any changes,” Albores said. “We are confident that Quest will remain committed to fulfilling its contract at the highest level. In the event Quest is not able to continue to fulfill its commitment, we will work to ensure that we have a high-quality food service provider for our students.”