University of Richmond
OP-6: Food and Beverage Purchasing

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Dining Services is committed to supporting of the local business community. Working with our primary vendor, Performance Foods, we identified dozens of companies and distributors located within 250 miles of campus. To educate our customers on these partnerships, we created large banners made to hang in the dining room and at the dish room of the Heilman Dining Center. In addition to foods that are ecologicially sound, fair, humane, and local & community based, Dining Services is dedicated to supporting local employers (whether or not they meet the BALLE standards). We try to buy from agencies that support Richmond residents, including the following: Seasonal Fruits & Vegetables, Twin Oak’s Tofu, Nabisco, Ready Mix Biscuit Mix, Sabra Hummus, Carolina Turkey, Smithfield Ham, Marva Maid Milk, Blanchard’s Coffee, Glenview Farms Cheese and more. Sustainable Seafood: Executive Chef Glenn Pruden works with a local, sustainable seafood company, Profish, to buy the freshest seafood available each week and puts it on the menu accordingly. When served, we post signage that indicates where the item is from and in most cases how it was caught or farmed. We added QR codes to the signage to enable people with smart phones to scan and go right to the information. Dining services uses the Virginia Fruit and Vegetable Availability Calendars as a guide to incorporate local produce on our menus and to increase awareness of eating seasonally. We are also continuing our efforts to compost pre-consumer food waste, reusable to-go materials, green cleaning, and a variety of sustainability-related endeavors.

To track sustainable food purchasing, the University of Richmond adopted the Real Food Challenge criteria and utilized the RFC calculator to track six months of data in the Hielman Dining Center. This comprises about 90% of the food purchased for campus.

Buy Local: We are always expanding our list of local vendors as they become available. Some the items we purchase locally include: Seasonal Fruits & Vegetables, Twin Oak’s Tofu, Blanchard’s Coffee, Glenview Farms Cheese and much more. This year at the Heilman Dining Center we will be providing special signage for items indicating local vendors. Sustainable Seafood: Executive Chef Glenn Pruden works with a local, sustainable seafood company; Profish, to buy the freshest seafood available each week and puts it on the menu accordingly. When served, we post signage that indicates where the item is from and in most cases how it was caught or farmed. Dining Services hands out 1200-1400 Live Well, Dine Green mugs to students on meal plans in September. Mugs are designed with the same artwork as the banners. Heilman Dining Center will continue to provide the reusable HDC to Go containers for purchase to carryout meals.

Data for this credit is coming from 6 months of purchases (July-December 2014) for Heilman Dining Center (HDC). Dining Services believes this is an accurate representation of University-wide dining purchases.