University of California, Davis
OP-8: Sustainable Dining

Farmers market:
Student Housing and Dining Services (SHDS) is a co-sponsor of the UC Davis campus farmers market. The Coffee House is also a supporter of the UC Davis Farmer's market.

Urban agriculture projects:
The Coffee House purchases locally grown produce from the UC Davis Student Farms as well as several other local farms. In 2019, the Coffee House also launched a garden program called the Rooftop Garden, which is intended to grow produce for Coffee House recipes and for donation to the student pantry.

Dining Services supports the Student Farm and the Resident Garden program. Dining does not host a Community Supported Agriculture program, however, the campus Student Farm does: https://asi.ucdavis.edu/programs/sf/farm-marketplace

Dining Services purchases produce from the Student Farm.

The Coffee House purchases a variety of products from small local businesses such as Russell Ranch, Pure Grain Bakery, and the UC Davis Student Farm.

Dining hosted several plant-based pop-up meals to gauge student interest in plant-based meals and has since added more plant-based options into the menu cycle. All burgers served in the Dining Commons are a 50/50 meat and mushroom blend. At one of the retail locations the Beyond Burger and 50/50 burger are served and listed as the first two items on the menu.

The Coffee House has meat alternatives at every food station and recently redesigned the menu at a satellite café to serve a plant-forward menu featuring a series of bowls offering tofu, falafel, and other vegan-based proteins as the main entree.

Dining Services currently offers a complete vegan option at all 3 of our residential dining facilities. We have a vegan entrée on the menu and offered during lunch and dinner at a dedicated platform as well as a broad range salad bar that contains vegan dips, salads, build your own salad and fruit available. During breakfast, our salad bar has a vegan congee available as well as oatmeal. Our catering department has options for vegan and vegetarian and are able to accommodate additional requests. Our menu planning ensures that at least 1 vegan option is available at all times in our residential dining and our menu labels designate vegan items with a blue V symbol. We have vegan desserts available during each meal period from third party vendors and at one resident dining facility we are offering a chia seed pudding which is vegan or vegetarian. We have coconut ice cream and a variety of milk alternatives available at each location and are consistently looking to improve selection. Other offerings we have on a daily basis are sprouted wheat bread, soft tofu, vegan spread/dip (rotates daily – includes romesco, hummus, babaganoush, etc. with pita chips), tahini, seed mixture for salad/entrees, Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, and nutritional yeast for sprinkling on anything.

The Coffee House has a vegan alternative at every food station and offers milk alternatives at each location.

Icons were created and added to menus and marketing materials (posters, napkin holder inserts, LCD screens, bulletin boards) to identify ingredients that meet sustainability criteria (i.e. Fair Trade, Local, Organic, Human, Sound). Additionally, there are sustainability and nutrition student staff that do in person peer-to-peer education that includes the topic of healthy and sustainable food choices.

The Coffee House has product-specific signs at several food stations.

The campus participates annually in the US EPA Food Recovery Challenge and reports the amount of food waste that is annually donated to feed people, composted, anaerobically digested, or recycled (for oils, fat and grease). As part of the challenge, the campus also sets food recovery and reduction goals for the following year.

All UC Davis Dining Commons are trayless dining; trays are not available at any location.

UC Davis Dining Services offers several programs that encourage food waste minimization. The Just Ask program at UC Davis Dining Services provides guests with an option of customizing a prepared dish by encouraging them to request alterations from our chefs. Signs are posted around the Dining Commons reminding students that they can ask for a dish without sides, in a half portion or without a bun.

The Try-a-Taste program at UC Davis provides guests in the all-you-care-to-eat campus dining commons an opportunity to sample a plated entrée or soup before taking an entire serving of food. This helps reduce food waste.

Reusable 4oz china ramekins or 2oz ceramic soup spoons are used as sample vessels. Platform cooks prepare a flight of samples that are available next to the fully plated items or crock of soup. A larger ramekin is available at the point of service for students to discard empty sample cups/spoons.

The Coffee House does not offer or use trays and has various portion size options for food and beverages to help minimize food waste.

UC Davis Dining Services participates in the Food Recovery Network Davis chapter, which was started on campus in 2012. The food is donated to the Aggie Compass, The ASUCD Pantry and local charities in the Davis community.

The Coffee House donates surplus food to its employees or to the Campus Pantry.

The fryer oil is diverted from the landfill and used for industrial uses. The pre & post-consumer food waste from the Dining Commons is sent to the campus Renewable Energy Anaerobic Digester.

The Coffee House has a recycling and composting program.

ASUCD Project Compost unit maintains a pre-consumer food waste program on campus that collects food trimmings, coffee grounds, etc. from campus retail eateries for on-site composting. Pre-consumer food waste is picked up twice a week by Project Compost.

Pre-consumer food waste from the Dining Commons is taken to a Renewable Energy Anaerobic Digester facility that is built on the campus landfill.

Post-consumer food waste is collected from all retail eateries and dining commons, a number of administrative offices/facilities, and special events. The composting implementation at each facility location is paired with an educational program to ensure that occupants understand and are able to compost their food waste/packaging accurately, decreasing the chance of contamination. The compostable material is taken to either an off campus commercial composting facility for processing or is taken to a Renewable Energy Anaerobic Digester facility that is built on the campus landfill.

At the Coffee House, ten three-compartment waste receptacles in the dining room collect "landfill", "mixed recycling" and "compost". Compostable waste (post-consumer) is collected in compostable bags and placed in a compactor, which is picked up and emptied every three weeks. 95% of the disposable-ware is compostable.

Student Housing and Dining Services collaborate with Sustainability to run a Reusable Utensil campaign. During the campaign reusable utensil sets were passed out to students, staff, and faculty in order to encourage them to reuse on campus.

All dining commons utilize reusable service ware for "dine in" meals. Most retail eateries utilize recyclable or compostable service waste for to-go meals, with the exception of a few meal products. All food facilities are composting facilities.

Dining Services recently replaced paper napkins with reusable linen napkins in the Dining Commons.

All dining commons and retail eateries have a composting program in place. A majority of supplies used by the food facilities are recyclable (paper, cardboard, plastics #1-6) or compostable (BPI and ASTM certified compostable). The supplies selected are based on campus recycling and compostable acceptance standards.

In special events, sometimes to-go containers are used to pack lunch boxes for event attendees. In these cases, composting bins are normally available during the events and the containers are compostable containers (commonly wax-lined paper containers).

Discounts are provided to customers who use reusable drinking or food containers when purchasing coffee or soda in food service facilities on campus. For example, customers get a discount at all Coffee House operations for providing their own cup.

At all Peet's locations, customers get a discount for providing their own cup or mug.

Quarterly front-of-house waste audits are done in all three Dining Commons as a way to educate patrons on food waste reduction. When patrons come to the dish return they are asked to sort their waste into four categories: edible food waste, non-edible food waste, liquid waste & napkin waste. Results are shared the following week along with tips on how they can reduce their individual food waste. Results and feedback on menu items served that day are shared with the chefs so they may alter their recipes.


The Coffee House also has a "Pay it Forward" program that allows patrons to purchase specific food items at each register to donate to the student pantry. For example, a customer purchasing pizza would be asked at the register if they would like to purchase an extra slice of pizza to donate. If the customer does purchase an extra slice, a voucher gets sent to the student pantry where students in need can collect food vouchers to redeem at the Coffee House.

Further information about the sustainable dining programs is available in below web links:

https://housing.ucdavis.edu/sustainability/
https://coffeehouse.ucdavis.edu/sustainability/