A US-based provider of food, facility management, and uniform services. It provides food and other services to prisons and immigration jails and uses prison labor.
Aramark, headquartered in Philadelphia, provides food, facility management, and uniform services to healthcare facilities, schools, entertainment venues, conference and convention centers, sports stadiums, prisons, and more. It claims to be the second-largest food and facilities services company in North America based on total revenue.
Through its subsidiary Aramark Correctional Services, Aramark provides food services to some 450 U.S. prisons and jails. As of 2024, the company has contracted with prison and jail agencies in at least 35 states. In addition to food services, Aramark also provides prisons and jails with kitchen maintenance, laundry facilities, an “iCare” gift package service, and property rooms, where prisons store the belongings of the people they incarcerate. In 2022, Aramark expanded its reach within the prison industry by acquiring Union Supply Group Inc., a Texas-based prison commissary and food company.
Aramark also provides food to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration jails. For example, private prison company CoreCivic, which operated ICE’s now-idled West Tennessee Detention Facility, subcontracted Aramark as its food vendor. In other cases, Aramark provides food to state and local prisons used by ICE to jail immigrants. These have included, for example, prisons in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. Aramark, in these cases, contracts with the company or local authority that operates the jail rather than directly with ICE. Aramark claims on its website that it “does not serve U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Centers or have contracts with ICE.”
Aramark has a long history of providing substandard food in prisons. The company reduces quantities and serves lower-quality, less nutritious food. It has been accused of severe violations, tainted food, food substitutions, and other health and safety issues. For example, in 2023, people incarcerated in West Virginia sued Aramark, alleging they were routinely served spoiled and undercooked food. In 2019, people incarcerated at California’s Santa Rita jail sued the company for serving food that was spoiled, lacking in nutritional value, and infested with rodents, insects, and bird droppings. While the lawsuit was dismissed on technicalities, rats, cockroaches, and bird droppings continued to be found in Aramark’s food as of November 2020.
In 2015—one year after fining Aramark $200,00—the State of Michigan terminated a three-year, $145 million contract with the company, citing unapproved menu substitutions, worker misconduct including inappropriate relations between employees and incarcerated individuals and “drug smuggling,” inadequate staffing, and other issues. Between 2014 and 2015, several reports came out about Aramark employees serving maggot-infested food, food from the trash, and food that was partially eaten by rodents in Michigan prisons. In 2015, Aramark settled a lawsuit filed by people incarcerated in Kent County, Mich., after they suffered food poisoning from eating rotten food provided by Aramark. In Ohio, the company’s prison kitchens have been found to have “maggots, mice turds, employee shortages, substandard food, and unsanitary conditions,” and in 2009, Aramark’s poor-quality food contributed to a prison riot at Northpoint Training Center in Kentucky.
Aramark uses prison labor to prepare and package food in some of the prisons in which it works. Under the company’s IN2WORK program, over 6,000 incarcerated people have worked in Aramark prison kitchens—many for 40 hours per week. The company, however, classifies incarcerated workers as “students” rather than “employees,” making them ineligible for adequate pay. In 2019, people incarcerated and held prior to trial at Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, Calif., sued Aramark, alleging that they were forced to prepare food and clean for Aramark under threat of lengthier jail sentences and solitary confinement. Incarcerated workers reportedly prepared and packaged more than 16,000 meals a day—some of which were sold to other jails in California—without pay. A lawyer representing the kitchen workers speculated that they performed millions of dollars worth of labor for Aramark and Alameda County. Despite this, the Supreme Court of California ruled in April 2024 that the state’s minimum and overtime wage laws do not apply to people held in pretrial detention.
Aramark has also provided staff uniforms, clothing, and shoes for “inmate release,” and laundry and catering services to ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. As of July 2024, Aramark’s only such ongoing contract is with CBP for dry cleaning and laundry services.
For years, Aramark has been the target of student-led campaigns calling on universities to stop contracting the company for their food services. Divestment campaigns targeting Aramark at New York’s Barnard College and New York University, as well as Trinity College in Ireland, were successful in canceling their universities’ contracts with Aramark. Students at other universities, including Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, University of California, Irvine, University of Louisville, and Saint Peter’s University, have called on their schools to end their contracts with Aramark.
Other Controversies
Aramark employees have repeatedly engaged in different kinds of misconduct. In 2017, more than 300 of the company’s employees were banned from working in state prisons after having “imported contraband or committed security violations or other misconduct.” In 2014 and 2015, five Aramark employees in Michigan were fired for or charged with sexual misconduct for engaging in inappropriate relationships with incarcerated individuals.
An Aramark employee in Michigan was also suspected of having approached an incarcerated individual about arranging to have another incarcerated person killed in 2014.
Aramark employees have also smuggled drugs into the prisons in which they work, as was discovered in 2015 and 2020.
- In April 2021, the state of Mississippi did not renew its contract with Aramark to provide food for state prisons. This came after a lawsuit was filed against Mississippi state prison officials by incarcerated people who claimed that they suffered food poisoning and severe weight loss because food was often spoiled, rotten, molded, uncooked, and contained rat, bird, or insect feces.
- In March 2021, Kent State University dropped its contract with Aramark as a food service provider after student opposition.
- In September 2020, students from Hamline University passed a resolution in the student congress to end ties with Aramark, the university's food service provider.
- In January 2020, Trinity College in Ireland terminated its contract with Aramark following years of student opposition.
- In March 2019, New York University (NYU) dropped its contract with Aramark as a food service provider after student opposition and replaced it with Chartwells.
- In April 2019, following suit, Barnard College also dropped its contract with Aramark as a food service provider after student opposition and replaced it with Chartwells.