Best Concepts: Sampling event featured dietetic student recipes using ingredients from minority/woman-owned businesses

In the Fall of 2022, Loyola University Chicago (LUC) Dining was approached by LUC’s Parkinson School of Health Sciences & Public Health and Naki Noku—a local, minority owned food sampling platform with a primary goal of supporting minority, local, and women owned businesses in the Chicagoland area—wishing to host a tasting event in one of Loyola’s dining halls. The result was a truly collaborative “Taste and See” event engaging with all aspects of the Loyola community and unique to its campus.

For its success in addressing a number of priorities in a single initiative, Loyola Chicago’s Taste and See has been named the Best Special Event Concept category winner in the 2023 FM Best Concept Awards program.

The event featured four recipes developed by the dietetics students from LUC’s Parkinson School using Naki Noku products with the guidance from Terese Sinal MS, RD, LD, Loyola Dining’s Registered Dietitian and a Loyola alum. The recipes provided by the dietetics Interns were prepared into 400 samples by Loyola Dining’s Simpson Dining Hall Team, then offered during the event on December 7th, 2022 to Simpson Dining Hall guests by the interns with the sole purpose of gathering feedback on their recipes. Further feedback was gathered in the form of a paper survey in which students voted for their favorite recipes and ranked the taste of the Naki Noku products.

Samples of recipes created by Loyola Chicago dietetic interns await students.

Chocolate C’s Chipotle BBQ sauce was in the recipe with the most votes and was then featured in a Chef’s Table event in January 2023.

The concept was born out of the need to truly integrate Aramark’s Loyola Dining Services as true partners of the university as well as the surrounding Chicago community. The initial goal was to provide the dietetics interns with the unique learning experience of creating their own recipes and having their peers taste it. However, Taste and See became much more than that by incorporating different departments of the Loyola Dining Team, including Dietetics, Culinary, and Marketing. The primary result of this collaboration is a continued partnership amongst all three entities to continue the effort in supporting local businesses and developing the Loyola community.

The event served three purposes essential to the values and missions of Loyola Dining Services: support the Loyola Community by offering a unique learning experience to the dietetics interns, support a local business, and offer new and exciting menu items to guests. This program was supported with an extensive marketing campaign that included an email blast to over 5,000 students with 32% open rate, print media, digital media and a social media campaign with the original post reaching 31 likes and 681 accounts. The pictures from the event reached 1,495 accounts, gathered 104 likes, and eight shares. 

The event also gave local minority and woman-owned businesses a chance to promote their products.

In total, the event saw approximately 150 participants, with the average guest tasting 2-3 of the samples and 53 of them filling out a survey.