Commissary & Foodservice Implications Described In Detail

On September 18, 2026, the FAR Council (comprising DoD, GSA, and NASA) along with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) officially issued a massive proposed rule for FAR Case 2026-003, titled Revolutionary FAR Overhaul Parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44, and 51. This overhaul is part of a sweeping initiative under Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement, which aims to strip the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) back to its pure statutory roots, eliminate non-statutory rules, and rewrite it into plain language.

The public comment period for this proposed rule is open until October 19, 2026. Below is our take on how the proposed rule could potentially affect commissary and food programs.

The proposed rule potentially reorganizes several foundational pieces of the FAR, focusing heavily on simplification and the elimination of non-statutory rules.

• The Commercialization of Construction: In a major victory for commercial builders, the definition of “commercial service” under FAR Part 12 has been expanded to explicitly include standard construction requirements. This shifts many routine building projects away from the notoriously complex and heavy requirements of Part 36.

• The Deletion of Part 38 and Part 51: To thin out the regulations, FAR Part 38 (Federal Supply Schedule Contracting) has been completely deleted and reserved. The procedural framework for ordering from GSA Schedules will now live outside the FAR, relocated to the General Services Acquisition Regulation (GSAR). Additionally, FAR Part 51 has been absorbed directly into Part 8, easing the path for contractors to utilize government supply sources when it benefits an active project.

• A 30% Clause Squeeze: The FAR Council has axed over 46 standard contract provisions and clauses. Most notably, the exhaustive FAR 52.212-3 (Representations and Certifications) and the legendary FAR 52.212-5 master clause checklist have been entirely eliminated. Compliance verification is being shifted out of individual contract packages and offloaded to centralized checking on SAM.gov.

• Bending “Late is Late”: Moving away from rigid, historical restrictions that automatically disqualified companies for minor administrative delays, Contracting Officers (COs) are granted expanded business discretion to accept late quotes if doing so clearly benefits the government.

Drastic Slicing of Administrative Friction in Food Procurement

Military food service relies heavily on high-volume commercial item acquisition. Under the new Part 12 framework:

• Removal of the Clause Matrix: Grocery and food service suppliers will no longer be subjected to the rigid, text-heavy FAR 52.212-5 flow-down matrix or the multi-page FAR 52.212-3 representations and certifications. Compliance checks for major distributors (e.g., Sysco, US Foods) will happen entirely in the background via SAM.gov.

• Protection Against Sudden Disqualification: The historical “late is late” restriction has plagued rapid food delivery quotes. COs can now use business discretion to accept slightly late quote revisions from food distributors if it secures better commercial pricing or prevents supply gaps.

Streamlining DeCA’s Push to Government Inventory

DeCA routinely coordinates with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Troop Support for subsistence supply chains.

• Absorption of Part 51 into FAR 8.105: The deletion of Part 51 and its assimilation into Part 8 explicitly expands a contractor’s legal ability to pull from existing government supply and inventory pipelines when it serves the government’s interest. This permits third-party military food service providers to seamlessly integrate DLA inventory and government-furnished wholesale food sources directly into their operations with far less regulatory friction.

Shift toward Corporate-Style Food Service Competitions

Large-scale military base dining facility (DFAC) management and catering contracts regularly exceed multimillion-dollar thresholds.

• Blending Parts 12 and 15 without Bureaucracy: For complex food service contracts exceeding $9 million, COs can now mix negotiation techniques from Part 15 with the flexibility of Part 12.

• Comparative Evaluations: Agencies are no longer forced to design rigid, check-the-box evaluation scoring systems or artificial “competitive ranges” just to choose a catering or cafeteria service provider. COs can simply pit the commercial offerings directly against one another based on quality, supply chain reliability, and price, closely mimicking private-sector hospitality procurement.

Supply Chain Risk & National Security Consolidation

Food defense and agricultural security are vital components of military readiness.

• The Part 40 Migration: Any specialized supply chain exclusions, tracking requirements for foreign food sourcing, or security prohibitions that previously cluttered standard commercial acquisition clauses are stripped out. They are now permanently housed in the dedicated FAR Part 40 (Information Security and Supply Chain Security) framework. Contractors managing food services must monitor Part 40 independently rather than expecting standard commercial contract packages to self-contain all compliance requirements.

The Randolph-Sheppard Act (RSA) Priority Shifting to “Comparative Evaluations”

The RSA dictates that blind vendors (represented by State Licensing Agencies, or SLAs) receive a priority preference for operating military cafeteria and mess hall contracts. Historically, this created immense friction under FAR Part 15 when competitive ranges and rigid scoring matrices clashed with the statutory mandate to award to an SLA if its price was within a “reasonable competitive range.”

• The Overhaul Shift: For military food service contracts exceeding $9 million, the new rule allows Contracting Officers (COs) to blend Part 12 and Part 15 seamlessly. COs are no longer required to establish a formal competitive range or score bids using arbitrary point matrices.

• The Compliance Reality: Because the overhaul aggressively strips away non-statutory rules under Executive Order 14275, the statutory mandate of the RSA remains fully intact. However, because COs will now use “Comparative Evaluations” (pitting proposals directly against one another on commercial merits like a private business), SLAs and their corporate joint-venture partners will face a much more commercial, fluid evaluation process. They will have to defend their technical, supply-chain capability head-to-head with commercial catering giants rather than relying on check-the-box regulatory frameworks. [1]

DLA Subsistence Prime Vendor & Wholesale Rules: Leveraging the New Part 8

Military base dining halls and galleys rely heavily on the DLA Troop Support Subsistence Prime Vendor program to get food delivered within 48 hours. [1]

• Absorption of Part 51 into FAR 8.105: The elimination of Part 51 and its integration into Part 8 radically changes how third-party food service contractors interact with government supply chains. Previously, allowing a private contractor to buy food directly through the government’s wholesale DLA catalogs required cumbersome, contract-specific authorizations.

• Streamlined Access: The new FAR 8.105 broadens the capability of commercial food service providers to tap directly into DLA’s wholesale inventory and the World Wide Directory for Sanitarily Approved Food Establishments. This minimizes commercial supply chain risk and reduces duplicate material costs, as contractors can pull food directly from government-negotiated DLA supply lines with significantly less paperwork.

Potential Impact on DeCA’s Grocery and Brand-Name Supply Chains

• Elimination of Part 38 Bureaucracy: DeCA and its industry partners (commercial food brokers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers) have historically struggled under rigid Federal Supply Schedule-style mechanisms. Deleting Part 38 and moving those rules out of the legally binding FAR allows DeCA to operate much more like a standard commercial retailer.

• Rapid Pricing Changes: In the commercial grocery world, supply costs and agricultural yields change daily. Under the rewritten FAR Part 12 commercial rules, COs have the flexibility to accept commercial pricing updates and late distributor quotes without triggering major procurement delays. This ensures commissary shelves stay stocked and responsive to rapid market movements.

The migration of supply chain security to the newly consolidated FAR Part 40, combined with the streamlining of FAR Part 12, fundamentally alters how domestic sourcing mandates—like the Buy American Act (BAA) and the Berry Amendment—are enforced for military subsistence and grocery supply chains.

The Separation of Security Compliance from Commercial Sourcing

Historically, domestic sourcing laws and geopolitical technology bans were tangled together within the same commercial contract clauses (such as the old FAR 52.212-5 matrix). This created immense confusion for agricultural suppliers who had to decipher whether a clause applied to their food product or IT hardware.

• The Part 40 Clean Break: Under FAR Case 2026-003, all national security prohibitions, foreign technology bans, and adversarial supply chain risks are extracted from commercial clauses and moved exclusively to FAR Part 40.

• What Stays in Part 12/25: Standard socioeconomic trade policies and domestic origin laws (like the BAA) remain under FAR Part 25 and Part 12. This means food service contractors and brokers now have two completely distinct compliance tracks: one for origin/trade compliance (Part 25) and one for supply chain security and foreign threat mitigation (Part 40).

The Berry Amendment vs. Buy American Act in Military Food Service

For military food service, the distinction between the BAA and the stricter Berry Amendment (10 U.S.C. 3222) is critical, and the overhaul impacts them differently:

• The Berry Amendment (DFACs & Mess Halls): Applicable to the Department of Defense (DoD), the Berry Amendment strictly mandates that 100% of food provided to the military must be grown, reprocessed, or produced in the United States. Because this is a statutory requirement, the FAR overhaul cannot weaken it. However, by utilizing the new FAR 8.105 (the absorbed Part 51), commercial food service contractors can more easily pull directly from DLA Troop Support Subsistence pipelines, which are already heavily vetted for absolute Berry Amendment compliance, offloading the domestic vetting risk from the contractor to the government’s wholesale supply chain.

• The Buy American Act (DeCA/Commissaries): Unlike troop feeding, items bought by DeCA for resale in commissaries are generally exempt from the strict domestic sourcing mandates of the BAA to ensure military families have access to international brands and diverse products. The elimination of Part 38 schedules allows DeCA to negotiate standard commercial grocery distribution agreements directly, enabling rapid, private-sector style procurement of both international and domestic commercial goods without standard federal supply schedule hurdles.

Part 40 Threat Mitigation in Food Logistics

While food products themselves might be domestic, the logistics networks that move them are highly vulnerable to foreign interference. FAR Part 40 centralizes security enforcement on the digital and physical infrastructure of the food supply chain:

• Warehouse and Fleet Security: Contractors managing military dining facilities or delivering to commissaries must ensure that their fleet tracking software, automated warehouse inventory systems, and cold-chain monitoring sensors comply with Part 40 bans on adversarial hardware or software (e.g., specific foreign telecommunications or logistics software).

• Traceability Compliance: Any future emergency supply chain restrictions or sudden bans on specific global agricultural regions will be pushed out instantly through Part 40. Under the new flexible evaluation rules, if a contractor’s supply chain relies on a software system or vendor flagged by Part 40, Contracting Officers can rapidly address or bypass that supplier using a Comparative Evaluation, rather than getting bogged down in traditional, slow-moving administrative cure notice periods.