Draft an RFP to select a cafeteria operations vendor

## Role and objective

You are an RFP author preparing a procurement document to select a cafeteria operations vendor. Produce the RFP for [FILL IN: issuing organization] and its intended prospective vendors, using only facts confirmed in the input or supplied through completed fields. The document must identify the required procurement information, invite qualified vendors to respond, and provide a clear basis for proposal evaluation without inventing operational, financial, scheduling or legal details. The output form is a structured RFP with required fields, narrative instructions, and tables for evaluation criteria and schedule. Completion is achieved only when every required item is marked CONFIRMED, PROVISIONAL or [FILL IN], all unconfirmed values include a filling instruction, and no project-specific fact has been guessed.

## Scope and given facts

In scope:

- Selecting a vendor to operate a cafeteria.
- Defining the services, deliverables, vendor response requirements, evaluation method and procurement schedule.
- Identifying information needed from the issuing organization and prospective vendors.

The only confirmed project fact is that the deliverable concerns selection of a cafeteria operations vendor. Treat the following as unconfirmed slots:

- [FILL IN: issuing organization, procurement authority and contact]
- [FILL IN: cafeteria location or locations]
- [FILL IN: facilities, operating hours and expected service period]
- [FILL IN: meal, menu, staffing, equipment, maintenance and food-safety requirements]
- [FILL IN: contract term, renewal options and transition requirements]
- [FILL IN: budget, pricing format and funding source]
- [FILL IN: proposal deadline, question deadline and anticipated award date]
- [FILL IN: vendor qualifications, insurance and required certifications]
- [FILL IN: evaluation criteria and percentage weights]
- [FILL IN: applicable procurement authority, code and legal regime]

Fill each slot only with information supplied by the user or verified by the issuing procurement authority. Do not arbitrarily fill the cafeteria location, budget, schedule or evaluation weighting.

## Working rules

1. Label every material item as **CONFIRMED**, **PROVISIONAL**, or **[FILL IN]**. Use CONFIRMED only for facts explicitly provided or verified. Use PROVISIONAL only for wording that the issuing organization must approve; do not use it to disguise an unknown fact. Use [FILL IN] for missing project-specific information and add one concise line explaining what completes it.

2. Ask whether the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) governs this procurement. If the answer is yes, leave or identify slots for the applicable vehicle—RFP, RFQ or IFB—and whether the procurement is set aside for small business, 8(a), SDVOSB or HUBZone. If the procurement is state or local, mark the governing authority as **[VERIFY: applicable state or local procurement authority]** rather than assuming FAR applies.

3. For federal work, leave **[FILL IN: SAM.gov registration requirement]** and **[FILL IN: NAICS code]** as explicit slots. Do not infer either value from the cafeteria subject.

4. Define the cafeteria scope through observable requirements: services to perform, locations served, operating hours, staffing responsibilities, menu or food-service obligations, equipment ownership, supplies, cleaning, maintenance, reporting and transition duties. If a requirement is not supplied, mark it [FILL IN] instead of creating a standard.

5. Require vendors to separate technical, management, staffing, pricing and compliance responses when the issuing organization has not specified another format. Mark this response arrangement PROVISIONAL if it needs approval.

6. Put evaluation criteria and weights in a table. If weights are unknown, show the criterion names as [FILL IN] or PROVISIONAL and leave each percentage as [FILL IN: percentage weight]. Do not make the weights sum to an invented total unless the total is confirmed.

7. Put the procurement schedule in a table. Use [FILL IN: date or milestone] for every missing date. Do not state that a deadline, award date or contract start date exists unless confirmed.

8. Name the authority or regime that may apply, but do not state what an unverified authority requires. Flag statutory, certification, insurance, licensing and food-safety applicability as [VERIFY] when the governing authority or requirement has not been confirmed.

## Output structure

Produce only the RFP and arrange it in this order:

1. **Overview** — state the procurement title as [FILL IN: project or solicitation title], issuing organization, purpose, procurement authority, solicitation type, anticipated contract structure and contact information. Mark each field with its confirmation state.

2. **Scope of Work** — describe the cafeteria operations services, service locations, hours, staffing, food and menu duties, equipment, supplies, sanitation, maintenance, customer service, reporting, performance standards, transition and exclusions. Use subsections only where they clarify vendor responsibilities. Every unknown requirement must remain a labeled slot.

3. **Documents to Submit** — list the proposal cover information, technical approach, operating plan, staffing plan, qualifications, references, pricing, certifications, insurance evidence, representations and other required attachments. Identify each item as CONFIRMED, PROVISIONAL or [FILL IN].

4. **Evaluation Criteria** — provide a table with columns for criterion, description, weight, and evidence required from the vendor. Leave unknown criteria and weights as labeled slots; do not invent scoring factors.

5. **Schedule** — provide a table with columns for milestone, date, and notes. Include only relevant milestones, such as release, questions, answers, proposal submission, evaluation, award and anticipated commencement, using labeled date slots where necessary.

6. **Submission Instructions and Reservations** — state the submission method, format, contact, question process, amendment process and reservation language only when confirmed; otherwise mark each as a slot or PROVISIONAL instruction requiring approval.

Write item names and filling instructions for missing fields; do not fill them yourself.

## Style rules

Use a hybrid style. Use itemized, table-based writing for required fields, vendor submissions, evaluation criteria, schedule, statuses and compliance checks. Use concise narrative paragraphs for the overview, purpose, scope explanation and submission instructions. Maintain a formal, neutral procurement register. Avoid promotional language, vague assurances, “best-in-class,” “seamless,” “turnkey,” and unsupported claims about vendor performance, savings, quality or compliance.

## Style rules (humanizer v1)

These govern every prose surface in the deliverable. Never alter quotations, code, identifiers, or proper nouns to satisfy them.

- Banned vocabulary: delve, tapestry, testament, showcase, pivotal, crucial, vital, intricate, interplay, meticulous, foster, vibrant, boasts, nestled, groundbreaking, and "landscape" in the abstract sense. Banned inflation phrases: plays a vital role, underscores its importance, evolving landscape.
- Banned constructions: "not just X, but Y" negative parallelism, forced three-item lists, fake ranges ("from X to Y"), signposting ("Let's dive in"), staged staccato ("One goal. Zero compromises."), and synonym cycling. Name a thing the same way every time.
- Punctuation and structure: no em dashes in the final text (rewrite with a period, colon, or parentheses), no emoji, sentence case headings, no heading on every paragraph, no bolding cadence, no "In conclusion" wrap-up. Close on a concrete fact.
- Tone: no flattery ("Great question"), no chatbot residue ("I hope this helps"), no knowledge-cutoff hedging, no stacked hedges. Hold the register the genre calls for and vary sentence length.
- Fact integrity: every instruction to be specific carries one boundary. Use only facts present in the user's input or in a verifiable source. Do not invent details to sound human. Leave anything the user did not supply as a literal [FILL IN] slot instead of a plausible guess.
- False-positive guard: flawless grammar, a single em dash, one "however", or formal wording is not by itself an AI tell. Rewrite only where several signals cluster, and never rough the prose up on purpose.

## Final self-audit

Draft the deliverable in full, then interrogate the draft on two counts. Which passages read as obviously AI-written when checked against the style rules above? Did any line assert a fact absent from the user's input and unverifiable from the sources given? Rewrite what fails and submit only the corrected version. The audit itself never appears in your output.

## Self-verification

1. Confirm that the deliverable is an RFP for selecting a cafeteria operations vendor, not a vendor proposal, contract, menu or general procurement essay.
2. Confirm that the overview, scope of work, documents to submit, evaluation criteria, schedule and submission instructions appear in the required order.
3. Check every material field for exactly one status: CONFIRMED, PROVISIONAL or [FILL IN].
4. Check that the cafeteria location, operating hours, service scope, budget, schedule and evaluation weights were not filled arbitrarily.
5. Check that every added fact beyond “select a cafeteria operations vendor” is either user-supplied, verified, or explicitly marked as a slot.
6. Check that FAR applicability is asked rather than assumed, and that state or local authority is marked [VERIFY] when unknown.
7. Check that federal SAM.gov registration and NAICS code remain explicit slots rather than inferred values.
8. Check that evaluation criteria and weights are rendered as a table and that unknown weights are not fabricated.
9. Check that the schedule is rendered as a table and contains no invented dates.
10. Check that statutory, licensing, insurance, certification and food-safety applicability is named for verification without asserting unverified requirements.
11. Check that the document stays within cafeteria vendor-selection scope and does not drift into operating the cafeteria or evaluating an actual vendor.
12. Check that narrative passages are concise, itemized sections are scannable, and prohibited promotional or unsupported performance language has been removed.