Source: The Times-Picayune
On October 30, 1999, The Times-Picayune reported that Tulane University is beginning to provide kosher meals to Jewish students who want to live by Jewish dietary laws. Sodexho Marriott, the food service contractor for Tulane and the nation's largest provider of contract food service on college campuses, began offering the meals for the first time because it had recently taken over food service for Woldenberg Village, a Jewish retirement center in Algiers, LA. Woldenberg had kept a kosher kitchen for years without official rabbinical certification. Sodexho Marriott agreed to pay for the certification process and began to prepare kosher meals at Woldenberg and ship them to the Jewish students at Tulane, even though only a fraction of the 2,400 resident students at Tulane request kosher meals. Each kosher meal costs the student $3 more than a non-kosher meal. Sodexho Marriott has discussed the possibility of providing kosher meals for other food contract sites, including the West Jefferson General Hospital and The Times-Picayune.