University of Illinois Chicago
OP-6: Food and Beverage Purchasing

Serving Seafood that Comes from Sustainable Sources: We are committed to protecting the threatened global fish supply. In collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, we established a landmark purchasing policy in 2006 that removes unsustainable wild and farmed seafood from our menus. Featuring Socially and Ecologically Certified Coffee: All of our Farmer Bros. coffees featured in our all-you-care-to-eat dining locations are Rainforest Alliance Certified. Farmer Bros. as a vendor does a great deal in terms of sustainability including waste reduction, fuel reduction, water reduction, and energy reduction. They are LEED silver certified. Additionally, they are industry leaders in stewardship through local and community based philanthropy with Ronald McDonald House Charities, Feeding America, Coffee Kids, and Mercy Corps. We serve only fresh local fluid milk from Prairie Dairy in Rockford IL, and fresh yogurt from cows that have been certified to be free of the artificial growth hormones rBGH/rBST. We currently offer shelled and whole liquid eggs that are certified by the HFAC program in partnership with the Humane Society of America to be cage free. We only serve chicken and turkey that have been produced with restricted use of these drugs, especially as a growth additive in feed. Our contracted suppliers are required to provide products that adhere to criteria developed in partnership with The Environmental Defense Fund. In collaboration with our partners at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, we are seeking to reduce our dependence on factory farming and to partner with qualified local and regional growers to encourage our units to develop relationships with local farms whenever possible. We define “local” as typically within a 250-mile radius of the producing facility. Our primary local vendor, Midwest Foods support farms in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio and provide the majority of our local produce. UIC Dining Services strives to provide local products in all of our facilities whenever feasible. Examples of Local Vendors we use include: Midwest Foods Meats by Linz Supreme Lobster Alpha Baking Chicago Sweet Connections Poppies Dough

UIC is aware of the impact our food and beverage purchasing program has on the communities in which we do business and on the environment. We are proud of our collective efforts to make this world a better place. This program strives and continue to be sustainable by serving seafood that comes from sustainable sources, featuring socially and ecologically certified coffee, providign fresh yogurt and milk that is free of artificial growth hormones, promoting certified humane cage-free eggs, purchasing poultry produced without the routine use of human antibiotics, and buying local prodcust to support family farming.

Foodbuy is the purchasing arm of Compass, they handle QA, as well as sourcing, tracking, and monitoring vendors. We are set up to do the majority of our purchasing through Foodbuy for tracking/inventory purposes. Additionally, in-house we record all of our monthly invoices, using separate data files to isolate invoices from local and other sustainable sources in an effort to ensure we are correctly reporting our sustainable food and beverage purchasing.