AL UDEID AIR BASE, QATAR -- The 379th Expeditionary Force Support Squadron rations warehouse provides over 500,000 meals a month at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.
“All AUAB dining facilities and flight kitchens combined prepare the most meals Air Force wide, but at times, comes in second to the Basic Military Training food operations at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas,” said Darryl Hebert 379 EFSS deputy commander.
The rations warehouse at AUAB supports the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing’s mission by providing an average of 18,000 meals a day for service members, civilian employees and contractors.
“Our mission is to ensure everyone has the ability to carry out their respective missions by ensuring they have quality of life necessities such as food, lodging and fitness,” said 379 EFSS Master Sgt. Eric Young, food service section chief.
One quality of life necessity is food, and thousands of meals are prepared every day at Al Udeid’s dining facilities and flight kitchens. The 379 EFSS tracks the number of meals it provides through a database the unit maintains. Every time someone scans his or her ID card, the system logs the meal.
“Scanning identification cards provides headcount information,” said Young. “You scan your ID card and it registers in the system, and at the end of the day the data is collected and used to create a daily summary spreadsheet. We track it daily to see how many people eat.”
Scanning ID cards also provides the rations warehouse data to purchase food, which enables the dining facilities and flight kitchens to stay stocked.
The 379 EFSS is permitted to spend $8.25 per person for everyone who scans an ID card, Young added. For example, if 100 people scan their cards, the unit can spend $825 to feed them.
“The rations warehouse is responsible for ordering all subsistence items for each dining facility and flight kitchen on base,” said Tech. Sgt. Jada Slayton, rations warehouse manager. “We work with each facility to ensure we are ordering the required and proper amount of each item. We have a four day turnaround on food ordering so we have to ensure the facilities are projecting their orders correctly.”
“Each facility places its food order daily except for Fridays,” said Slayton. “We can receive between 3-7 trucks a day and after unloading the truck into the warehouse, dining facility and flight kitchen staff come pick up their orders.”
The rations warehouse is critical to food operations at AUAB, Slayton said.