Virginia Tech
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

This is a work in progress for our Dining Services Sustainability Manager and Office of Sustainability Interns. Sustainable supply chain measures are “what’s cooking” in a brand new collaborative project between the Virginia Tech Office of Sustainability and Virginia Tech Dining Services. This new project is an effort to create an internal database of locally sourced, sustainably or ethically sourced, plant-based, vegetarian/vegan, compostable, and recyclable items.

Proposed Plan of Action:

Below is the Food Intern Project description that describes the cataloging and analysis process for evaluating our current sustainable sourcing practices within dining.

Food Interns Project Description
The food internship food tagging project is an exciting opportunity for students to gain real-world experience into supply chain management and sustainable purchasing practices. Interns will tag currently purchased items using the appropriate sustainability item tags and make suggestions for future sustainable purchases.

Intern Responsibilities:
- Tag items on FoodPro ordered by Dining Services.
- Design a checklist of tagged items and questions.
- Collaborate with the Sustainability Manager to develop valuable sustainable purchasing research skills and vendor sustainability analysis skills.
- Use financial and sustainability comparative analysis when making production change suggestions.
- Perform research and analysis in support of operations.
- Investigate and match STARS OP-7 definitions for “plant based” and “sustainably sourced” food with FoodPro tagging efforts.

Intern Learning Outcomes:
- Develop an understanding of the university dining sector.
- Draw connections between food purchasing and business operations.
- Gain valuable experience in supply chain management and sustainability.

Campus Sustainability Impacts:
- Leverage data-informed projects to assist decision makers make informed decisions.
- Develop communication channels and best practices for sustainable sourcing.
- Track our sustainable sourcing practices, in order to help Virginia Tech work towards its AASHE STARS OP-7 campus sustainability goals.

Aspiration for Student Learning Focus:
- Pursue SELF-UNDERSTANDING and INTEGRITY
- Interns will form a set of affirmative values related to sustainable purchasing and develop the self-understanding to integrate these values into their decision-making when evaluating personal & professional purchasing decisions.

Webinar:
Interns will participate in a webinar to gain insights into the functionality of the program and how to pull datasets.