Transport plans in Italian catering tenders: what scores points and what becomes binding

In Italian public catering tenders, meal transport looks like a side chapter of the bid, yet it can decide the ranking. In the 2024 tender through which Milano Ristorazione, the City of Milan’s in-house school catering company, hired contractors to deliver meals to the city’s schools (four lots, €22.2 million in base prices over five years), the transport plan was worth up to 25 of the 70 technical points. Add the electric vans and the time needed to put them on the road, and 46 of the 70 points depended on vehicles and routes.

Those 25 points were not a matter of the evaluation board’s judgement. A formula calculated them from the emissions implied by the kilometres and vehicles in each bidder’s plan. After the award, the same plan becomes a contractual obligation, with penalties for every deviation and an updated version due within ten days whenever the delivery points change.

This guide is for the people who write technical bids at logistics operators, transport cooperatives and contract caterers bidding for Italian public contracts. It starts from tender documents and legislation, all read in the original on 10 October 2026, and ends with a method for building a plan whose kilometres and times hold up.

The short version

• Under Italy’s Public Contracts Code, school, hospital and care-home catering and labour-intensive services can only be awarded to the most economically advantageous tender (MEAT), assessed on the best price-quality ratio. In labour-intensive services, price can carry at most 30 of 100 points.
• Italy’s mandatory green public procurement criteria for catering (CAM) reward low-emission vehicles and fewer trips. They don’t ask for a CO2 calculation; in Milan, where the tender included one, the contracting authority ran it.
• In Milan the plan was submitted as an Excel template, leg by leg. Missing deliveries cost points on a sliding scale, and beyond 250 of them the plan scored zero.
• The plan you bid is binding. In Milan, penalties ran from €200 to €750 per breach, the fee dropped if promised electric vans didn’t arrive, and repeated breaches led to termination.
• An incomplete plan can cost you the contract. Italy’s Council of State upheld an exclusion in July 2026 because a transport plan left out three sites listed in the specifications.
• The next tender to watch is Milano Ristorazione’s contract for warehousing and transporting food supplies, expected from 2027, with a stated goal of cutting kilometres by 5%.

What the evaluation board looks at

Three articles of Italy’s Public Contracts Code (Legislative Decree 36/2023) explain why transport carries so much weight.

The first is Article 108, on award criteria. Hospital, care-home and school catering, along with labour-intensive services (those where labour accounts for at least half of the contract value), can only be awarded on the best price-quality ratio. In labour-intensive services the price score is capped at 30%, so at least 70 of 100 points go to quality. Milan’s meal-transport tender, like Milano Ristorazione’s procurement in general, gave 70 points to the technical bid and 30 to price.

The second is Article 57. It makes the minimum environmental criteria mandatory, at least in technical specifications and contract clauses, and requires contracting authorities to use them for award criteria too. The same article requires social clauses to protect jobs, which in Milan’s tender became a plan for taking on the outgoing contractor’s staff, worth 14 points.

The third is Article 130, which requires catering awards to reward, among other things, compliance with the minimum environmental criteria. That is how transport enters the tender, along with whatever each contracting authority chooses to write into its criteria.

The Milan case: 46 of 70 points on vehicles and routes

This is how tender 15/2024 split its 70 technical points, according to the award criteria annex.

Criteria B.1, B.2, B.6 and B.7 are about vehicles, routes and electrification timelines: 46 points in all. Bids scoring below 21 technical points, 30% of the maximum, were excluded.

A formula awarded the 25 points

The detail that changes how you write the bid is how the 25 points for the plan were awarded. Milano Ristorazione didn’t ask bidders to calculate emissions. It calculated them itself, “by means of a software tool whose models have been verified” against the EN 16258 standard and the GLEC Framework 2.0, starting from the vehicles and kilometres in each bidder’s plan.

Points then came in two parts. Well-to-wheel CO2e earned up to 15 points, in inverse proportion to the best bid. A bid emitting 20% more than the best one got 12.5 points; one emitting 50% more got 10. Particulate matter (PMx) earned up to 10 points on a linear scale between the best and the worst bid. The best got 10, the worst zero, and a bid halfway between them 5.

Three practical consequences follow.

1. Every kilometre enters the score, multiplied by the emission factor of the vehicle that drives it. A shorter route and an electric van instead of a combustion one move points in the same way.
2. Completeness matters as much as quality. The Excel template had to contain every combination of destination and service in the delivery lists. One to ten missing entries cost a point, 11 to 50 cost three, 51 to 150 cost ten, 151 to 250 cost twenty, and more than 250 cost all 25.
3. Missing data is filled in with the worst case. If the vehicle register was incomplete or didn’t match the report, the calculation used the factors of the most polluting vehicle the specifications allowed, such as a standard Euro 6 diesel van.

On particulate matter the scale is relative. Meeting the requirements isn’t enough, because the worst bid still scores zero.

What the minimum environmental criteria reward

Outside Milan, the common reference is the set of minimum environmental criteria for catering adopted by ministerial decree on 10 March 2020 (no. 65), still in force. The decree explicitly lists “the transport and serving of meals” among the activities that make up a catering service. For school catering, award criterion C.b.2 is titled “Implementation of solutions to reduce the environmental impacts of logistics” and gives cumulative points for two things. The first is a commitment to deliver meals with lower-emission vehicles: electric, hybrid, hydrogen, biofuels, methane or LPG. The second is shared warehousing and transport, such as a common depot or full-load trips, cutting the number of trips from suppliers to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the canteens. The same criterion applies to canteens in offices, universities and barracks, and to hospital and care-home catering.

For vehicles, a declaration listing them is enough (manufacturer, model, category, fuel, emission class and registration plate, if already available). For shared solutions, bidders need to belong to a centralised warehousing and transport system, or own a depot. The decree asks contracting authorities to give award criteria “a significant share of the overall technical score”. It doesn’t require any CO2 calculation, says nothing about routes and doesn’t say how to measure fewer trips. A plan that compares kilometres and trips, before and after, gives the evaluation board a number to assess. Route optimisation becomes a criterion when the contracting authority writes it into the tender, as Milan did.

A circular from Italy’s environment ministry dated 25 September 2025 later reminded contracting authorities that base prices must cover the cost of these criteria, award criteria included, and of the national collective labour agreement. Those costs include low-emission vehicles.

The tenders we read

Milan isn’t an isolated case, but it is the extreme one. We read the documents, or the court rulings, of other Italian school, hospital and social-care catering tenders published between 2023 and 2026. The weight given to transport varies enormously; the timing constraints and penalties much less.

Three things stand out. The first is that the weight of transport doesn’t depend only on how many meals travel. In Rome about 90% of schools have their own kitchen and transport earns no points; in Prato almost every meal leaves the supplier’s kitchen, yet the plan is worth 6 of 90 points. Where it earns no points, transport remains an execution constraint, with timings and penalties.

The second is that, outside Milan, kilometres don’t earn points. What earns points instead is the fuel type of the vans, the kitchen’s proximity and travel times estimated with Google Maps. For home-delivered meals in Prato, every extra van is worth 0.75 points, the opposite of what Milan rewards. In the documents we read, only Milan calculates emissions from the plan’s kilometres and cites EN 16258 and GLEC.

The third is that timings are tight everywhere and turn into penalties: 15 minutes of travel in Rome, 40 minutes from departure in Florence, 15-to-20-minute windows by type of school in Prato, a fifteen-minute window per delivery in Milan.

The starting data: what the contracting authority publishes

A transport plan is built on data the tender itself provides. In Milan, for each lot, the list of delivery points and meal times gave, for every stop, the kitchen the meals leave from, any intermediate pick-up point, the address, the type of user (nursery, pre-school, primary, lower secondary and others), the serving shift, the time meals are collected from the kitchen, the time they are eaten, the number of meals and whether electric vans are expected. A typical line reads, for example, 470 meals collected at 10:30 to be eaten at 12:15.

Those lines hide tight constraints. The specifications required each meal to arrive at least 15 minutes before eating time. The service contract between the City of Milan and Milano Ristorazione adds a limit that binds Milano Ristorazione, and therefore whoever transports for it. No more than 30 minutes may pass between delivery and serving. Taken together, every delivery has a fifteen-minute window.

On top of that:

• a five-hour round per van and driver, or a “complex” round with a second worker for loading and unloading;
• fruit to be delivered by 9:30 to primary schools taking part in the mid-morning fruit scheme;
• empty insulated containers collected every day;
• a minimum number of vehicles per lot, 124 vans in all, of which 15 electric;
• 10-11.5 cubic metre vans without insulation, with meals travelling in insulated containers, and refrigerated vans for chilled meals;
• vehicles allowed into Milan’s Area B low-emission zone and Area C congestion-charge zone until 30 September 2030.

Then there are hygiene constraints. Transport must comply with the EU food hygiene regulation (Regulation 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter IV). Italy’s national guidelines from the Ministry of Health set no maximum time. The 2010 guidelines for school catering require the meal transport plan “drawn up by the service operator” to be followed and every trip to keep “travel times to a minimum”; the 2021 guidelines list travel times from kitchen to serving among the parameters to monitor. The numbers come from each set of specifications. In Prato, hot meals must leave the kitchen at no less than 65°C and reach the table at no less than 60°C. In Florence, no more than two hours may pass between production and consumption. In Rome, no more than 30 minutes may pass between cooking the first courses and serving them. The plan has to show it stays within these limits for every delivery, not on average.

How to build a plan that holds up

The method below works for any tender for transporting meals or food supplies. The Milan references are there to make it concrete.

1. Rebuild the network exactly as the documents describe it. Every delivery point with its coordinates, every kitchen, every service (meals, bread and fruit, container pick-ups, chilled meals) and every shift. Use the codes in the delivery lists, because those are what the tender template expects.
2. Turn the constraints into rules a calculation can follow. The delivery time windows at every stop, the time needed to unload and carry containers into the canteen, van capacity measured in containers, the maximum round length, the range and charging of electric vans, and intermediate pick-up points.
3. Estimate kilometres and times with a stated method. If the specifications name a tool, use it. In a 2026 school-catering tender in the town of Frattaminore, for example, the contracting authority clarified that travel times should be estimated with ViaMichelin, on a weekday and within the service’s time slot.
4. Compare several scenarios before deciding. The minimum number of vans and one or two more, the electric share from day one or within one or two years, simple and complex rounds. Each needs kilometres, times, estimated emissions and cost. In Milan the fee was a price per van per day, so the number of vans weighed on both the score and the economics of the contract.
5. Fill in the template without gaps. Before uploading the bid, count the destination-service combinations in your plan and check them against the delivery lists, which must match. Check that every vehicle in the routes is in the register and that the report and the spreadsheet show the same numbers.
6. Write the report for someone who will redo the sums. Three pages are enough if they explain how times and kilometres were estimated, which scenarios were compared, why the one in the bid was chosen and what happens in an emergency.
7. Think about delivery from the start. The plan you bid becomes the benchmark for inspections and penalties for the whole contract, and every change in delivery points or times has to be resubmitted within days. A plan that only works on paper becomes a cost.

It’s the same work described in our guide on how to optimize delivery routes, with one difference. In a tender you compare scenarios before knowing whether the contract will be yours.

An example with public numbers

For the food-supply tender, Milano Ristorazione put a target in writing in its 2025 sustainability report (pages 64 and 65). It wants to cut the distance driven from its new logistics hub to its kitchens by 5% by 31 December 2027. In 2025 that distance was estimated at 248,642 kilometres, so 5% means 12,432 kilometres a year.

We don’t know yet how the tender will be written. We do know that the new contract’s kilometres are the figure Milano Ristorazione will use to measure that goal: actual data, the report says, will be available “from the start of the new tender”. A bid that comes with kilometres estimated from the new hub, scenario by scenario, speaks the buyer’s language.

The same report gives a second useful figure. In 2025 electric vans made up 54.84% of the fleet delivering meals, against zero in 2024, with targets of 80% in 2026 and 100% in 2030. The 2024 specifications required at least 15 out of 124, or 12%. In a tender the minimum is a threshold, not a target.

After the award, the plan becomes the contract

Milan’s specifications say so explicitly: inspections cover compliance with “the commitments made in the technical bid”. The penalties were:

• €200 to €750 for failing to follow the transport plan in the bid, or for not sending an updated plan;
• €200 to €600 for breaching other technical-bid commitments;
• €50 to €500 for missed timings;
• termination if penalties exceeded 10% of the contract value, or for repeated breaches of technical-bid commitments.

Electric vans had their own rules. If the extra electric vans promised in the bid didn’t arrive on time, the fee was cut by their depreciation, as stated in the price bid. Missing the shorter deadline offered for the mandatory electric vans was grounds for termination.

For delays in general, Article 126 of the Code sets daily penalties of 0.5 to 1.5 per thousand of the net contract value, capped at 10% overall. And one principle applies even before signing. If an element that earned decisive points, such as a vehicle delivery time, turns out to be untrue, paying the penalty isn’t enough: the reliability of the whole bid falls. The Council of State, Italy’s supreme administrative court, ruled so in judgment 3739 of 2024, in a tender for the supply of vehicles.

The plan then has to be kept alive for years. In Milan the contractor had to:

• fit every van with a GPS tracker recording routes, times and kilometres each day;
• give the contracting authority access to the monitoring platform;
• send a monthly report with the vans used each day and daily and monthly kilometres;
• complete the digital delivery note on the contracting authority’s devices, signed by the driver on departure and by the recipient on delivery;
• submit an updated plan for approval within 10 days of every new delivery list.

In practice, the contracting authority can compare the plan in the bid with what is actually delivered, day by day.

Vans, leasing and subcontracted hauliers

In Milan, the vans had to be named in the bid with a document proving their availability for the whole contract: a certificate of ownership, a contract or an equivalent deed. For electric vans offered beyond the minimum, an accepted purchase proposal or a purchase commitment also counted. A long-term lease is a contract that can provide that proof, as long as it covers the whole term.

Handing rounds to an outside haulier who works with their own vehicles and at their own risk, on the other hand, is subcontracting under Article 119. It has to be declared in the bid, or it’s forbidden later, and in labour-intensive services neither the whole contract nor most of it can be subcontracted. In Milan, unauthorised subcontracting was grounds for termination. If you already run a mixed fleet with owner-operators, the tender plan has to say clearly who drives what.

How to fund what the tender rewards

The tenders we read reward low-emission vehicles and require tracking and planning. As of 10 October 2026, these are the tools for funding them in Italy.

• N1 and N2 vans. The national grant for small and medium freight businesses has €24 million, plus €16 million reserved for electric and hydrogen vehicles, for purchases made in 2027, but the decree opening applications hasn’t been issued yet. In 2026 the window ran dry within a few hours. Our guide to commercial vehicle incentives has the full picture.
• Regional grants. In Lombardy, the Rinnova Veicoli scheme reopens on 2 March 2027 with €970,000: up to €8,000 for an electric N1 van and up to €2,500 for an e-cargo bike, with scrappage and no more than four vehicles per business. Other regions are covered in our guide to regional grants.
• Nuova Sabatini, Italy’s interest subsidy on equipment finance. It’s open, and an electric, hybrid or hydrogen N1 van counts as a green investment with a higher subsidy. It doesn’t cover simply replacing a vehicle with an equivalent one, though, and it covers software only when capitalised, not on subscription. Details are in our guide to Nuova Sabatini for commercial vehicles.
• Super-depreciation. Purchased, capitalised and connected software and hardware qualify for investments completed by 30 September 2028, with a sworn technical appraisal. See super-depreciation 2026 and Industry 4.0 software.

The real problem is timing. A tender requires electric vans by a fixed deadline (365 days in Milan, or less if you offer that for points), while incentives open on a first-come basis and can run out within hours. Build the price bid without counting on them. In Milan, bidders had to state the cost of additional electric vans, and if the vans then fail to arrive, the fee goes down. How the different measures stack is explained in our guide to stacking incentives and the de minimis rule. Before committing in a bid, check the picture with your accountant.

Mistakes that cost points, or the tender

• Bidding fewer vans than the minimum set in the tender annexes.
• Leaving a delivery or a service out of the plan. In Milan it cost points. In Arona, in a school-catering tender, it led to the exclusion of the winning bidder, upheld by the Council of State in judgment 6148 of 2026. The plan left out a day centre, a supported-living flat and an educational facility listed in the specifications, and pointing out that they were close to the kitchen didn’t help.
• Leaving the vehicle register incomplete, or inconsistent with the report, so that the calculation uses the worst vehicle.
• Promising times that don’t fit the delivery windows, or rounds longer than the maximum.
• Promising electric vans on a timeline your suppliers can’t guarantee.
• Submitting a report, spreadsheet and vehicle register with different numbers.
• Estimating times and kilometres with an undeclared method that the evaluation board can’t recalculate.
• Building a plan that can’t be updated within days when delivery points change.

Milan’s 2027 food-supply tender

Milano Ristorazione’s current contract for warehousing and transporting food supplies was signed on 21 June 2023 for €10.5 million, after a tender that drew a single bid. On 10 October 2025 the company published a call for a consultant to prepare the new tender. The assignment covered overseeing the specifications (indicators, service levels, penalties), the fee structure behind the base price, and the technical award criteria and their weights, with the contract to go to the most economically advantageous tender.

The new logistics hub is being built within the wholesale markets complex run by SOGEMI, and food supplies will leave from there for the kitchens. The sustainability report expects the new tender to start “from 2027” and sets the 5% kilometre-reduction goal. In the same document, Milano Ristorazione commits to monitoring kilograms carried, kilometres driven and vehicle characteristics in half of its contracts above €500,000 expiring each year, fully in place by 2028. As of 10 October 2026, the tender has not yet been published on its tenders page.

Anyone planning to bid has a few months to prepare: rebuilding flows from the new hub, estimating kilometres and times in several scenarios, deciding what share of electric vans they can guarantee and when.

How we work on the transport side of tenders

Optivo supports companies on the transport side of public tenders as a standalone service, from reading the tender to reporting:

• reading the specifications and criteria, to see where the points are and what will become an obligation;
• the route plan built on the tender’s delivery list with OptivoRoute, and comparisons between scenarios with more or fewer vans, different electric shares, kilometres and times;
• the bid materials, meaning an Excel or CSV export to carry into the tender template and the figures for the report (field mapping is checked tender by tender);
• writing the transport part of the technical bid and support up to submission;
• after the award, plan updates when delivery points and times change, and vehicle tracking with OptivoTrack;
• reporting, both what the buyer requires and the applications and expense reports for vehicle incentives.

In tenders like Milan’s, the contracting authority calculates emissions. What it needs from bidders are correct, consistent kilometres, times and vehicles, and that’s what we work on. Buyer access to the platform and report formats are checked contract by contract. To see which constraints the planning engine can already handle, there’s our constraint library.

Frequently asked questions

Next step

If you’re preparing a bid for a catering or meal-transport tender in Italy, or want to be ready for Milan’s food-supply tender, let’s talk about the transport side of your bid.

Sources consulted on 10 October 2026. Public Contracts Code, current text · Minimum environmental criteria for catering, 2020 decree · Environment ministry circular, 25 September 2025 · Milano Ristorazione, tender documents · Service contract with the City of Milan, annex 13 · 2025 sustainability report · Award notice, tender 14/2022 · Call for a consultant, 10 October 2025 · AMAT, Milano Ristorazione logistics · Frattaminore tender clarifications · Council of State, judgment 6148/2026 · Council of State, judgment 3739/2024 · Ecobonus FAQ · Rinnova Veicoli 2026-2027 grant · Nuova Sabatini, ministry page · UNI EN 16258 status · UNI EN ISO 14083 record · GLEC Framework version 3.2. Criteria, timings and amounts change from tender to tender and from scheme to scheme. Before committing in a bid, check the documents in force and, for incentives, check the picture with your accountant.