University of Vermont Dining supports local producers, reduces waste

Beyond producing and serving delicious food, the Sodexo Dining team at the University of Vermont (UVM) is supporting local farmers and producers, reducing waste and giving back to the community as over the past decade, UVM Dining has developed important relationships with student clubs, departments and community partners to reduce food waste and increase access to healthy food for the entire community.

The program is committed to supporting the local and regional farmers, food producers and educating the UVM community about where their food comes from through Sodexo’s Vermont First Program. Since the inception of the program in 2014, UVM Dining and other accounts in the state track local food spending (defined as grown/manufactured in Vermont) to provide transparency about purchasing and develop strategies to increase locally grown food. As part of UVM’s Comprehensive Sustainability Plan, which was released in April 2022, UVM Dining has committed to increasing local food spending to 25% by 2030, in line with the Vermont Farm to Plate Strategic Plan.

In the 2022 fiscal year, UVM Dining purchased products from 64 local producers and 13.2% of UVM Dining’s total food spend was local. The Vermont First program also recognizes the importance of supporting and growing the regional food system, and the most recent data from 2022 found that 16% of UVM Dining’s food spend was regional (defined as grown/manufactured in New England /-50 miles).

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This fall, Sodexo donated $3,000 to UVM’s Rally Cats food pantry through the Zime Give Back program of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation.

In addition, throughout the year, UVM Dining hosts four week-long celebrations of Vermont’s iconic local foods—Farm Fest, Apple Fest, Cheese and Dairy Fest, and Maple Fest—during which it invites local farmers and producers to campus for pop-ups and sampling events while the culinary teams offer special local entrees and treats across campus.

Besides the local procurement ties, UVM Dining has been an integral part of UVM’s Hunger Collaborative since 2016, ensuring the launch and success of a Swipe Out Hunger program that offers cooking workshops to off-campus students and supports the development and operations of the on-campus food pantry, Rally Cats Cupboard. As the cost of living continues to climb, the UVM community is seeing more students access food insecurity programs and, during the 2022-2023 academic year, UVM’s Swipe Out Hunger program distributed 16,520 meal swipes to 1,180 students.

Participation in the national Swipe Out Hunger program also allowed Rally Cat’s Cupboard to apply for and receive a $3,000 Swipe Out Hunger Food Pantry Grant in 2022, and the pantry received several $1,000 Food Pantry Grants from Sodexo’s Stop Hunger Foundation since opening in 2020. This fall, the company donated an additional $3,000 to the pantry through the Zime Give Back program of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, which donates a portion of the proceeds to anti-hunger organizations. Since 2015, the UVM Zime program has raised and donated over $22,443 to local food pantries.

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In terms of waste reduction, UVM Dining is committed to decreasing packaging and food waste on campus as much as possible, deploying a variety of programs to help reduce the amount of recycling, compost, and landfill that is generated in the dining spaces. 

UVM Dining has also utilized Leanpath technology to help weigh and track compost coming from its kitchens since 2013.

For instance, EcoWare—UVM Dining’s reusable container program that has been on campus since 2011—offers free memberships to first year students with an on-campus meal plan and is the only way to take to-go meals from the dining halls while also offering a 25-cent discount when used in select retail locations. In the 2022-2023 academic year, this program diverted around 30,000 single-use containers from going into the landfill.

UVM Dining has also utilized Leanpath technology to help weigh and track compost coming from its kitchens since 2013. Currently, four kitchens on campus use the program, which has reduced food waste by about 50% since its inception. More recently, in the Fall 2023 semester, food waste was reduced by 15%, which is equivalent to over 19,000 meals. 

To further reduce food waste and to combat food insecurity, UVM Dining partners with the student-run Food Recovery Network club every Friday afternoon to host a Free Food Pop-up at Rally Cats Cupboard. The club picks up excess packaged food from three retail locations that would otherwise expire over the weekend and offers it free of charge for anyone in need. Last year, the club diverted and distributed more than 7,000 pounds of food. The dining team also continues to work to donate extra food from catering events to the pantry