University of Dayton
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

GOALS: Achieve and maintain Green Restaurant Association Certification. Maintain at least 3 stars at large locations and minimum 2 stars (out of 4 possible) at smaller cafes. Continue to purchase Fair Trade items, at minimum two foods at each location. Continue to source more items to offer and sell across campus dining and retail outlets. Increase food procurement from local and regional food producers; and/or Fosters, a sustainable food service program that contributes to the economic vitality, environmental sustainability, and quality of life in the region. Increase the percentage of foods purchased with third-party certification (USDA certified organic, Certified Humane Raised, Sustainable Seafood, etc.) Maintain variety, quality, and availability of vegetarian, vegan, and organic options. We will encourage our vendors to supply us with food that is, among other attributes, produced without synthetic pesticides and hormones, or antibiotics given to animals in the absence of diagnosed disease. We will work with our food suppliers, local farmers, and community-based organizations to increase the availability of locally sourced food, when seasonality permits; in order to: -reduce negative environmental impacts by decreasing the distance food travels from farm to plate; -improve the economic vitality of communities in and around UD service areas; -and increase the freshness of fruits and vegetables that enter UD’s food supply. Any changes in our food purchasing policies and practices will minimize operational impacts, be economically viable and, whenever possible, be cost neutral. Working with the Hanley Sustainability Institute, we will be reviewing the impact of our food purchases on our greenhouse gas emissions. Work with food suppliers to try to minimize non-compostable packaging and use compostable and recyclable packaging as much as possible.

The timeframe of our reporting was the 2017 calendar year. It began with the head of the university’s dining services, Joan Bauman, who assembled an initial list of food and beverage items purchased at the university that she already knew were Third Party Verified or those she considered to be local. Next, Bauman contacted Produce One and Gordon Food Services, main food suppliers to UD, to gain their information regarding Third Party Verification and local company status of the specific products we buy from them. Bauman also investigated every vendor that UD utilizes to check against the criteria necessary for this STARS section. Most other vendors did not meet the criteria. To further research which food and beverage items to include for this section, HSI office assistant, Emily Wagner, researched each product that could potentially count as Third Party Verified or local. This involved visiting each company’s website, searching product brands in various Third Party websites, and using LexisNexis Academic to gain financial and ownership information on companies. To determine that companies were within 250 miles from the university, Wagner used Google Maps to check all existing locations for the companies associated with each product. This research process ensured that the items included in our final list all fit the necessary criteria. To arrive at the expenditures for the total amount spent at the university, UD’s finance and budget manager ran a report on all food and beverage expenditures for the calendar year of 2017. To configure how much was spent on the qualifying items, Bauman ran a report through our Cbord software for the dollar amount purchased and received on those specific items. Some items that were initially identified as possibly fitting the criteria for this assessment were excluded if the company was too large, therefore highly lucrative, or if the university does not spent enough money on the items for them to significantly alter the report, especially in the case that they end up not fitting the criteria after all.