The question.
How many of Pennsylvania’s state food contracts go to suppliers outside the state? No published figure answered it, so we built one from the contracts themselves.
The data and the method.
- Source
- The Pennsylvania Treasury Contracts e-Library, searched by subject term, with each contract’s detail page and documents. Pulled in September 2026.
- Documents read
- 8,912 contract PDFs, about half of them scanned images, read in full by September 2026.
- Supplier location
- Of 7,821 contract rows, we could place the supplier for 6,890. For 6,179 the address is in the contract document. For the other 711, the location comes from the same vendor’s other contracts, used only when all of them agree.
- Check
- A separate review re-ran the counts from the raw files before publication.
What we found.
- By count
- 1,763 of the 6,890 contracts, about a quarter, went to a supplier outside Pennsylvania.
- By agency
- The Department of Corrections placed 1,128 of those 1,763.
- Why count, not value
- The contracts state ceilings, not money spent, and a single large ceiling makes up about a third of the out-of-state value. The count is the steadier measure. The dollar figures and their caveats are on the initiative’s website.
What the figures do not show.
- State, not city
- These are Commonwealth contracts, not City of Philadelphia spending.
- Ceilings, not spend
- A contract ceiling is the most that can be paid under it, not what was paid.
- Addresses
- Locations are the supplier’s registered or payment address, which is not always where the food is grown or prepared.
- Categories
- The contracts include distributors and food-service management companies as well as food suppliers.
Where it stands.
Findings published October 2026. The full figures, sources and method are on philadelphiafoodeconomy.com. The wider food-economy framework is in development.
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