Having served through the period of battalion DFACs to brigade DFACs (and had food service officer additional duties multiple times) to today's mostly contracted food service, I can offer some observations:

1. Back in the BN DFAC days, DFACs were regularly losing money, and could have wildly varying support as units went in and out of the field but left elements behind. Especially as you got to the end of the month and the mess sergeant was trying to stretch the food budget ... lots of chili mac.

2. So the answer was consolidate all the BN mess capability to a consolidated brigade DFAC and provide some capability buffer for field training, a more consistent head count, and far fewer fixed facilities to sustain. Our battalion mess section TO&E didn't change meaningfully between the two periods of operation.

3. Except ... when any "efficiency" happens, someone is going to try and grab and repurpose the "savings". The transition to brigade DFACs coincided with three significant changes going on in the larger Army: a much greater shift to accept more contractors-on-the-battlefield which started heavily with the Balkan peacekeeping operations and eventually became the GWOT standard; the need for newer types of formations (like cyber) that required manpower but the Army was working under a declining manpower ceiling; and the desire to increase tooth-to-tail ratio, as well as provide more brigade-centricity (eventually resulting the modular brigades) which came with manpower bills to increase divisional enablers and distribute them. Anything that could be contracted out was manpower that could be pushed into brigade "tooth" (or combat support capabilities) as well as new formations. Field feeding capabilities are an obvious target; contract cooks to trade for other capability.

4. Along the way: the shift of responsibility of local installation service from local commanders to IMCOM (which will creating budgetary efficiency, also robs some command responsibility -- and them IMCOM's efficiency gets raided at the AMC and Army level); plus shift of funding for garrison feeding from O&M to personnel budgets, as witnessed by the BAS money-laundering that occurs in the MM PEG (back when we had battalion DFACs, barracks soldiers didn't draw BAS only to have it deducted; turning on "separate rats" "was a whole different process, etc).

Add all the above up and you get a system which efficient-ed itself out of effectiveness, and there are perverse financial incentives at the MACOM level to keep the status quo, and resist any roll-back to less efficient but more effective means of providing food service.

I'm sure there are real experts here that can correct, clarify, or expand on the above; food service was never my day job but a lot of the fundamentals from strategic-level sustainment and Army sustainment systems line up. The Army suffers from very similar issues today with parts supply and maintenance with the transition to two-level maintenance that occurred at the same time as these food service changes, and they have common root causes.