Pentagon takes step toward potentially privatizing commissaries

Commissary officials have taken the first step toward the potential privatization of the military grocery stores , seeking input from the commercial grocery industry on whether they could take over the operation of 178 commissaries across the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

The Defense Commissary Agency released an official Request for Information, or RFI, on sam.gov, the federal government’s contracting site, on Friday. It’s a preliminary step before a Request for Proposals could possibly be issued.

“The purpose of this RFI is to determine whether commercial grocery operators and investment firms are both interested in and capable of assuming commissary operations, with no government subsidy or with a materially reduced subsidy, while preserving the critical