Colorado State University
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

Housing & Dining Services works with our food distributor to purchase local and organic foods when possible, always working to balance cost for students with quality products. Our produce specifications require vendors to bid and supply local and organic produce when available and reasonably priced.

We chose two sample months (October 2018 and April 2019) that accounted for seasonal variation. Calculations were made after manually combing through the invoices, and cross referencing vendor lists of organic or local products. Animal products were self-identified. Products with some animal product, but not all, were excluded (ex. mac and cheese, cheesy tortilla chips, etc.)

CSU purchased $102,531 in food and beverage products that do not meet the above standards, but have sustainability attributes. The sustainability attributes these purchases met were from companies that were not publicly traded but locally owned (Mom and Pop stores) that either could not afford 3rd party verification, could not be grown locally, or could not determine the % by weight of locally grown and raised ingredients in their product. An example of this would be the Old Town Spice Shop, and Bean Cycle in downtown Fort Collins. These companies are locally owned but spices, and coffee beans are not grown locally. Additionally, New Belgium Brewery, although a large brewery, is a B-certified corporation and 100% employee-owned.

This data was collected based on purchasing inventories provided by Housing and Dining Services and the Lory Student Center for the months of October 2018 and April 2019. For each month, products that were designated as organic or local & community based (as determined by AASHE criteria). Products were counted as organic or otherwise third party verified if they explicitly mentioned it on the label or if the vendor identified that product as organic or otherwise 3rd party verified. Products were counted local & community based if vendors were from the Fort Collins area and/or within a 250 mile radius, and qualify as community-based single or multi-ingredient products. Only products created locally were counted; we excluded products that were "distributed" locally. To determine an animal product, only products that were completely animal based were included (fresh, frozen and canned). For example, products like fish, ham, sausage, eggs, milk, butter, cream cheese and yogurt were counted but products like mac and cheese, chicken tortilla soup or ham and cheese hot pockets were not included.