Price decided Tampere library café tender, professor says

Yle reports that the tender for the café at Tampere Main Library appears to have followed the law, although the decision to replace the long-serving operator has caused anger in the city.

Cafe Metso, which has operated at the library for nearly 20 years, will be replaced by Compass Group Finland after the tender was won by the larger company. Cafe Metso’s parent company, Vinedu, lost the competition.

A petition supporting the current operator, Kaisa Kalliolahti, had gathered 9,000 signatures by Friday afternoon.

Anne-Mari Jussila, Tampere’s deputy mayor responsible for cultural services, said she understood residents’ frustration. She said she would call an extraordinary meeting of the Culture and Leisure Committee to review how the process was conducted.

Jussila said the result was unlikely to change because city officials had acted as required and made no errors in the process.

Price outweighed quality

Public law professor Tomi Voutilainen examined the tender for Yle. He said the price had effectively decided the competition, as the two leading bidders received identical quality scores.

Both bidders received the maximum score in every category and exactly the same written assessments.

“This is, of course, an easy way to proceed. It avoids questions about why one bidder was given more points than the other. The result is that quality factors had no impact,” Voutilainen said.

Voutilainen said losing the tender was unfortunate for a small company, but that the legislation allowed it.

Under European Union rules, a company’s local status cannot be used as a tender criterion. The criteria may relate, for example, to whether products come from local producers or whether transport distances are short. However, the fact that an operator is local or pays corporate tax to the municipality cannot be used as a criterion.

Kalliolahti has said she will request a review of the decision.

Voutilainen said it was difficult to assess whether such a request would succeed. The company would need to show that an error had occurred in comparing the bids. In general, he said, a review request should not be made solely because the outcome is disappointing.

He added that quality assessments were difficult to challenge. Even if the winning bidder’s quality score were reduced, quality carried little weight compared with price.

Why the café has a right-of-use agreement

Many people have questioned why the library café operates under a right-of-use agreement that must legally be put out to tender.

According to Kalliolahti, the café operated under a fixed-term rental agreement during the previous operator’s tenure.

The café at Pyynikki Observation Tower and the restaurants at Mustanlahti harbour are examples of businesses rented to operators. The city can choose tenants for those premises without holding a tender.

Lauri Savisaari, director of Tampere’s cultural services area, said activities arranged through right-of-use agreements were not simply businesses handed over to outside operators. They also involved a municipal service interest.

In premises that are rented out, the city has no interest in the operation or its purpose, Savisaari said. In cultural and sports facilities such as the library, however, the city uses the agreements to ensure that its service objectives are met.

If the library café operated under a rental agreement, the operator could decide its opening hours, the content of its services and its prices independently, Savisaari said.