New Food Delivery System Installed at Cook County Facility

CHICAGO — On at typical day at the Cook County Jail, 11,500 inmates are served breakfast, lunch and dinner on thousands of plastic trays. After more than ten years of leaky trays and lukewarm meals, the Cook County Department of Corrections ordered a change-out of the jail’s food delivery system.

Designed by Cortech Correctional Technologies Inc., the new thermoplastic delivery system replaced the stainless steel carts and plastic trays that had been in use since the facility’s new kitchen opened in the early 1990s. Cracked trays and carts with broken doors, hinges and wheels beleaguered the original system.

The new installation included 20,000 trays and 150 carts made of high-density, insulated plastic to keep food warm and stand up to frequent trips from the kitchen to the dining area.

“The new system’s heat retention is keeping the food warmer much longer because of the thermoplastic material,” says Mike Maltese, food service contractor with Aramark. “The high-density plastic is able to take much more abuse than the old steel carts.”

The carts make at least six trips each day, delivering three meals a day through a series of tunnels connecting the kitchen to other parts of the detention center.

To avoid previous struggles with broken doors and wheels, the county worked with Cortech to develop a delivery cart with fewer replaceable parts by eliminating hinges from the doors and doing away with traditional kingpin casters on the wheels, which are a common cause of wheel breakage, according to the company.

The company went through 14 redesigns of the plastic housing and 17 redesigns of the stainless steel base before producing a plastic cart with a 10-gauge steel base, reversible sliding doors and casters without kingpins.