TO: Honorable Mayor & Members of the North Port Commission
FROM: A. Jerome Fletcher II, ICMA-CM, MPA, City Manager
TITLE: Approve Contract Number 2025-14.002, Emergency Feeding and Catering Services, By and Between the City of North Port, Florida, and Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC, Secondary Vendor, and Authorize the City Manager to Approve the Future Renewal Terms.
Recommended Action
Option 1: Approve Contract Number 2025-14.002, Emergency Feeding and Catering Services, by and between the City of North Port, Florida, and Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC, Secondary Vendor, and authorize the City Manager to approve the future renewal terms.
City Commission Options
Option 1: Approve Contract Number 2025-14.002, Emergency Feeding and Catering Services, by and between the City of North Port, Florida, and Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC, Secondary Vendor, and authorize the City Manager to approve the future renewal terms.
• Pros:
o Contracts are established to feed City responders during disaster activations ensuring available food to sustain responders.
o Contracted vendors are pre-established, which allows for greater coordination and faster mobilization of feeding needs if the Contracts need to be activated during a disaster.
o Pricing is fixed within the Contracts and meal pricing is capped at Contract rates.
o Established federalized Contracts maximize the likelihood of receiving Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursement for disaster feeding expenses.
• Cons:
o The City has less flexibility to look for available vendors to pivot for alternate options at the risk of FEMA reimbursement.
o The City must attempt to go to the Primary Vendor and exhaust their ability before moving to Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC, the Secondary Vendor.
o Additional staff time to coordinate the Contract and meet with vendors.
Option 3: Deny Contract Number 2025-14.002, Emergency Feeding and Catering Services, by and Between the City of North Port, Florida, and Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC, Secondary Vendor.
• Pros:
o Allows the City to search out for any vendor able to provide feeding services in a disaster.
• Cons:
o Jeopardizes the City’s ability to feed critical disaster responders during an emergency when the food service and grocery industries may be unavailable.
o Lessens the likelihood that the City will receive FEMA reimbursement in a declared disaster.
o The cost of feeding responders may be significantly higher without fixed pricing established pre-disaster.
o The nutritional value and food safety may be jeopardized during a disaster scenario.
Background Information
The City of North Port has endured several large-scale disasters in recent years and continues to face significant risks from hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires. These events can potentially devastate the community and the infrastructure, necessitating City responders and mutual aid support to save lives and protect property. During a disaster, these responders require feeding to ensure they are able to perform their duties which becomes a responsibility of the City.
Additionally, depending upon the type, severity, and scale of the disaster, the grocery and food businesses in the City may be compromised, and the loss of power or water utilities could make it difficult to feed responders. Therefore, it is essential to secure a contract to provide feeding services for emergency responders to ensure they can perform their duties effectively.
The Emergency Management Division worked with the Procurement Division of the Finance Department and other City Departments to put together a Request for Proposals (RFP) to seek the most qualified and experienced disaster feeding vendors to contract with for disaster feeding services. This evaluation included a price proposal from the vendors which are included in the Contracts and cap out the prices that can be charged when the Contracts are activated. No work is guaranteed under these Contracts, and they will only be activated when a disaster feeding need is identified.
The following provides a chronological order of events regarding the procurement of the Requests for Proposals:
Ø July 9, 2025: Procurement advertised the competitive procurement RFP 2025-14 Emergency Feeding and Catering Services for qualified vendors to submit a proposal for consideration.
Ø August 8, 2025: RFP 2025-14 closed its advertisement window and two submissions were received for evaluation.
Ø August 18, 2025: An evaluation and ranking meeting was facilitated by Procurement with members of Emergency Management and City Departments on a panel to evaluate the merits of the proposal. The evaluation and ranking were conducted and a recommendation was put forward to rank Cotton Commercial USA, Inc. as the primary vendor and Puff ‘n Stuff Events Catering as the secondary vendor. A Notice of Intent to Award was published to this effect.
Ø September 22, 2025: Procurement facilitated a Pre-Award Meeting with both the primary and secondary vendor to talk through specifics on the Contract application and the needs of the City during a disaster.
Contract number 2025-14.002, Emergency Feeding and Catering Services, have been reviewed by the City Attorney and are legally correct as to form.
Contract number 2025-14.002 Emergency Feeding and Catering Services were provided to the City Clerk’s Office on February 26, 2026, for signature, subject to City Commission approval.
Strategic Plan
Disaster Response and Recovery Management
Financial Impact
None at this time, the financial impact will be disaster dependent.
Procurement
These services were procured pursuant to the Code of the City of North Port, Florida to Chapter 2 Administrative, Article VIII Procurement, Section 2-405 Competitive sealed Request for Proposal process.
Puff ‘N Stuff Catering, LLC
250 Rio Drive
Orlando, FL 32810
Attachments:
1. Contract No. 2025-14.002 with Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC
2. RFP 2025-14 Notice of Intent to Award
3. RFP 2025-14 Pre-Award Memorandum
4. RFP 2025-14 Ranking
5. Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC Proposal
6. RFP 2025-14 Emergency Feeding and Catering Services
7. Florida Division of Corporations Puff ‘n Stuff Catering, LLC
Prepared by: Mike Nevarez, Deputy Emergency Manager
Department Director: A. Jerome Fletcher II, ICMA-CM, MPA, City Manager