California State University, Monterey Bay
OP-8: Sustainable Dining

Elior North America has the privilege of serving more than one million meals each day to people across the United States. We take our responsibility seriously to be good corporate citizens and ensure our company positively impacts the people we serve while making a positive difference in our local communities. We are focused on rising global health issues, environmental challenges, decreasing amounts of food waste, and the need for ongoing employee development. Our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) strategy was created by Elior Group to generate a positive foodprint from farm to fork by working closely with our suppliers, clients, guests, and team members. This strategy is called the Elior Group Positive FoodPrint Plan™. It was built to encompass the entire value chain including sustainable ingredient sourcing, healthy food choices for our guests, food waste reduction and identifying opportunities to enable our team members to grow within our organization. Our four main commitments: to help our guests to achieve good health by providing healthy choices and raising awareness, improvement procurement to increase the sustainability of our ingredients, innovate and collaborate to reduce food waste and other waste through our value chain, working towards a circular model, create and promote local jobs which are inclusive and help people to fulfill their potential. Our four main goals: for 100% of our guests to be able to choose healthy and delicious food by 2025, for 10 of our major ingredients to meet our sustainable and local sourcing criteria by 2025, zero food waste to landfill by 2025, and for 7-% of managers to come from internal promotions, contributing to personal advancement and diversity, by 2025 Elior North America is proud to partner with suppliers in our local communities that adhere to responsible actions and practices. We foster transparent and collaborative relationships with our suppliers to ensure we are able to positively impact our clients, communities, team members and people that we serve each day.

Inside of the dining commons, there is a designated vegan station that only serves composted vegan entrees with protein sources. Some examples are beans and tofu. The options at that station change every day for both the lunch and dinner service. At other locations, there is always one vegan option available for customers as well, however, the number of vegan options will vary. In addition, we feature a salad bar daily that includes a wide variety of local and organic produce when available and vegan protein such as garbanzo or kidney beans, edamame and composed salads like a Citrus Spiced Lentils. The El Camino Taqueria includes a build your own burrito daily featuring vegan refried or black beans, Mexican fried rice, lettuce, tomato and guacamole. Brown Rice and legumes are available daily at the Dining Commons, as well as vegetables, tofu, soy beans, and more. Campus Dining has worked first hand with CSUMB vegan to offer a vegan-friendly menu, such as Amy's frozen items at the Otter Express.

Meatless Mondays : Every Monday we highlight the vegetarian options in the dining room. For example, Broccoli Cheddar Baked Stuffed Potato, Cheese Pizza, Mad Mex Vegetarian Quesadilla, Citrus Grain Salad, Roasted Curry Tofu, Lentil Dal and Curry Roasted Vegetables, Stir-Fried Cabbage, Peppers and Peas. A few examples of low impact dining events on campus are farm to table events where we feature special and unique seasonal produce and dishes. We always ensure that we have meatless and vegan options at all times.

At the dining commons, we regularly host Farm to Table events + Seasonal Plates Features which are focused on highlighting local and seasonal produce. We also host sustainability-focused events and try to incorporate sustainability within all our events as we are a food-focused and sustainability-driven organization. Annually, we host Earth Week special and events which also make up our sustainability-themed meals.

We label all food options throughout the Dining Commons that are local, vegan, and gluten-free. We also identify the vendors that the meals were sourced from and routinely feature promotions that educate guests about the overall impacts of their dining choices such as their waste, energy resources, food waste, etc. Our dining halls now also incorporates BeWell information on all the food served at each service based on their nutrition facts.

A’viands regularly sends appropriate parties to relevant sustainable food conferences to glean new information about sustainable foods systems to bring back new information and implement them when appropriate within our operations. A’viands on a corporate level partners with the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch organization for best practices in regards to sourcing and procurement. Locally, A’viands continuously works to build and grow their local network with relevant nonprofits such as MEarth and other organizations that also are sustainable food-focused.

As a 2014 winner of the Food Management Best Concept award, Mindful by Sodexo is all about providing choice – to consumers, clients and our own Sodexo staff. We believe that when people are presented with delicious healthy options and choose those foods on their own terms, they are more likely to enjoy them and realize the benefits that come along with a healthier lifestyle – and consequently more likely to repeat those good choices everywhere they go. Some examples of Mindful options offered at CSUMB include: Spicy Korean Tofu Pita and Tandoori Vegetable Pita, Roasted Italian Vegetable Wrap, Mediterranean Veggie Wrap, Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwich, Chimmichuri Chicken Biggie Sandwich, Seared Chicken Greek Salad, Korean Stir-Fried Vegetables with Tofu, Cauliflower Tofu Curry, Posole Style Chicken, Pork & Hominy Stew, Pesto Spinach Tomato Penne Casserette and Turkey Sausage Arugula Pizzetta https://www.mindful.sodexo.com/ Food is a meaningful and significant part of culture. As an international company, we have an opportunity to showcase the cuisine of many countries through our Global Chef program. CSUMB hosted Sodexo chefs from a variety of countries over the past several years bringing the authentic techniques and recipes to our culinary teams and the unique tastes to our guests. In October, Chef Ronald Thomas Minezes from India spent a week on our campus and prepared the menu and meals for our students. During that week, he met with students, shared samples of food native to his culture and answered many of the student’s questions. His ethnic cuisine received such a great response from our students that our chefs were inspired to continue to break cultural boundaries with every meal. CSUMB Dining Services also partners with many programs and clubs across the campus to support events like API Week, the BSU Jamboree and International Education Week to prepare traditional dishes from around the world. A’viands has a BeWell program, which is focused on sustainable food and nutritious healthy options being the easy options for their clients and customers. In regard to mindful and culturally diverse options, A’viands regularly has stations featuring Mexican food, a world flavors stations which rotates between different types of Asian cuisines.

A’viands team is installing a food waste tracking program called Winnow to help us track and reduce waste within the kitchen at the Dining Commons. We also track on a monthly basis our waste output during lunch services during our Watch Our Waste programs.

A’viands has implemented trayless dining at all locations that serve food. We also utilize smaller dishware and plates to help minimize over-heaping of food products to encourage students to come back and take the right amount of food that they need. We also encourage students to communicate with the staff when being served if they need smaller portions or to ask for plates without certain food items that they do not want to eat as well.

The A’viands catering team partners with the CSUMB Basic Needs organization to implement our “OtterEats” program where we allow people to choose whether or not they want to list their event as an “OtterEats” event at the end. This means that if the event ends and there is plenty of food left over, a text message will be sent out to a group of self-selected students that will then be notified when and where the leftover food will be and will then be allowed to come and eat the food on site to help feed hungry students while eliminating food waste. We also are currently working on a program with our Basic Needs committee to help donate leftover food from Starbucks to the Basic Needs program as well to continue minimizing our food waste output.

Our used cooking oil is collected by Pure and then recycled into low carbon diesel fuel.

All locations (Dining Commons, Otter Express, Monte’s, and Verve) have comprehensive pre-consumer composting prep capabilities, all locations that serve coffee also compost coffee grounds and other relevant prep items.

All post-consumer food waste and compostable single-use materials are composted through Green Waste Recovery. Students/Campus community are required to scrape all food waste and sort compostable materials into bins before placing service ware in the dish return. All these materials both organic and compostable are then collected and composted through Green Waste. We regularly conducted “Watch Our Waste” events with our student body and campus community, which is just one of the ways that we regularly engage and educate our campus community about the amount and type of waste is being generated on campus. We collect this information and then use it to publish case studies and marketing materials to help educate them on their direct impact on food waste

At the dining commons and Monte’s, reusable plates, cups, and silverware are the default option. We also offer “Otterware” through the Dining Commons for students to utilize outside of the Dining Commons to keep their events sustainable and zero waste by giving them the option to rent reusable dishware and then return it.

At all dining locations that allow for retail or to-go/take out options, we offer compostable, recyclable, or biodegradable items such as cups, straws, soup cups, plates, bowls, cutlery, napkins, and so forth. We have taken every initiative to continuously review our inventory lists to ensure that we are always sourcing the best compostable single-use items for our locations. All these compostable offerings are then collected and composted through our composting program in partnership with Green Waste. In our catering program, we also offer chinaware for events, as well as compostable and recyclable single-use items.

We always offer a reusable cup program at our Starbucks, Verve, and Otterexpress location on site. Any guest who brings in a reusable cup will receive a $0.10 discount on their order. We also regularly offer increased discounts at $0.50 and $1.00 off beverages when customers bring in reusable cups to these locations as well to continuously encourage and incentivize our campus community to bring in their reusable mugs and cut down on single-use disposable items. We also offer our green-box program where students pay a one-time fee to obtain their green to go container. Once they receive it, they are able to fill it up at the Dining Commons with their meal and leave. They just have to bring it back dirty to trade it in for another new one.

Our SCA napkins are made from 100% recycled content paper (90% post-consumer) and are dispensed via “one at a time” Xpressnap dispensers. SCA paper towels are made from 100% recycled content. Eco-Products compostable cups, portion cups, straws, lids, and utensils. Eco-Products is a Certified B Corporation, earning the coveted distinction for meeting "the highest standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability." Office paper is made from 30% post-consumer recycled content and is FSC certified. Ecolab products decrease impact in many ways, including concentrated formulas that reduce packaging. For example, the APEX dishwashing system uses 95% less packaging. Floor cleaners that do not require rinsing save water. Bulk condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and BBQ sauce in our retail operations eliminate single-use packaging waste. We print double-sided in our offices when printing is necessary. Our paper is made from 30% recycled content and is FSC Certified.