University of Rochester
OP-7: Low Impact Dining

Dining Services partners with its vendors to track each purchase by category and specific protein. The vendors supply Dining Services with a purchase report each semester breaking down the University’s purchases by protein, category the protein falls in, ex. Grass fed, free range, cage free etc. Dining Services uses this information to properly categorize the product. The University of Rochester just partnered with FarmLogix to help expedite and streamline the process. Their mission is similar to ours, and they have the ability to make the process easier and more detailed.

There are vegan meals available at every meal every day at all major dining halls on campus. These meals include whole grains and proteins and are considered to be complete. Hillside Market also sells vegan snacks, drinks, and frozen foods. There is also a stand alone vegan station in one of our main dining centers.

In our residential facilities, we design our menus with at least 3 Vegan/Vegetarian options at every meal and one of our locations maintains a Vegan station at all meals that offers a complete vegan meal – entrée, side, and dessert. We offer legumes and alternative proteins on our residential salad bars and offer a locally sourced and produced veggie burger patty. In many of our recipes we have also substituted coconut milk for traditional dairy products as a means to further reduce our animal derived products and offer additional options to our Vegan students. Our Meatless Monday program offers a completely meatless meal once a week in one of our major residential locations and alternative protein options figure heavily into the menu planning process. Our dedication to local purchasing also reduces overall environmental impact even when purchasing proteins as the processing and travel impacts are much reduced at the local level. For the 4th year in a row, University of Rochester Dining was recognized as a “Most Vegan and Vegetarian Friendly Campus’ by PETA2. Meatless Monday To bolster our Meatless Monday program, we have partnered with several groups on campus including the SAVVY group (Student Association of Vegan and Vegetarian Youth), Team Green, a group of students employed by dining with a dedicated purpose of driving sustainable initiatives in dining, and the University Health Service department. Our Campus Nutritionist and Chef Manager work closely with these groups to develop menus for each Meatless Monday event and we have also partnered with other student groups on campus to provide meatless cultural theme meals and dishes. Some of the most popular dishes include: eggplant moussaka, curried red lentil quinoa burger, local Kennebec potato puff pastry, cauliflower crust pizza, cauliflower buffalo wings, Aloo Tikki burger topped with mango chutney, Daal, and vegan desserts like New York State blueberry crumble shooters, coconut milk kheer, vegan chocolate cake, and grasshopper pie made with avocados. Meatless Monday meals remain among the most popular and highly attended events in the host location and the menus continue to evolve and improve.