Wooster College Dining gets over a third of its product from local sources

Wooster College does not sit in the most productive agricultural region in the country by a long shot. Nevertheless, the school, located in northern Ohio between Cleveland and Columbus, has one of the most successful local procurement programs in the country, as a full 36 percent of its food purchases come from within 250 miles of campus, the definition for “local” accepted by the AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) program.

Local sourcing “has been building over the past 10 to 12 years” at Wooster, says Marjorie Shamp, director of campus dining & conference services. “We started out very slowly because the limitations on the growing season in Ohio are a problem. However, we realized we don’t have to limit it to just produce.”

She cites eggs as an example, which are sourced by the school from Ohio hatcheries. Her program goes through six or seven dozen cases a day because of the popularity of its all-day omelet station. Also, all the coffee used in dining and catering on campus comes from a Cleveland-based roaster (Caruso’s Coffee).

Another Cleveland-based firm, Green City Growers, operates a hydroponic greenhouse that produces among other things a specialty crop called Cleveland Crisp that Shamp describes as a cross between iceberg and green leaf lettuce, “so it’s green but it has a crunch to it and the student love it.” 

Velvet View Farms, located just south of the campus, supplies yogurt made from milk from its 70 Holstein cows (“they all have names,” Shamp quips). “They milk them and process the yogurt 17 feet away. We go through probably six or seven 30-pound tubs of their yogurt a week.”

Produce in season is secured from local farmers and even on-campus gardens. Shamp is currently looking into sourcing so-called “ugly” produce, fruits and vegetables that are perfectly edible but have failed to meet commercial aesthetic standards. “If you’re just going to chop them up and throw them in a soup, who cares what they look like,” she observes.

The category Shamp is looking to increase local sourcing for now is meat, which lags other categories “simply because of logistical concerns. We can source some local chicken through some of our suppliers, but it is more expensive and a lot of our students are asking for antibiotic- and hormone-free.”

She says she did find a supplier of such product that isn’t local, “but we are looking around to determine how we can source more local meat by setting up partnerships not only with the producers but the processors.”

One handicap the Wooster dining program has to cope with is the age of its facilities. Its primary residential dining hall, for example, dates back to 1968 “and dining menus were a lot different then!” she laughs.

Lowry Dining Hall is Wooster’s main residential dining facility.

For one thing, the facility—Lowry Center Dining Hall—lacks adequate storage space, “so we’re looking down the road at a new dining facility where we can expand our storage space to be able to purchase more local products and store them” rather than constantly buying for immediate use, a pricier approach.

The other residential dining facility, Kittredge Dining Hall, is smaller and only operates for lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday, but it is the venue for one of Wooster’s most cherished dining traditions, the Soup and Bread program.

The student-run initiative began more than 30 years ago and allows diners who participate to donate a portion of their meal swipe to hunger charities. In return, they get a minimal meal of soup and bread. It takes place weekly on Wednesday at lunch.

“We provide the soup, but the student volunteers serve it and clean up,” Shamp explains. There are typically three soup choices, including one that is vegan. Breads come from Orlando Baking Co. in Cleveland.

Ordinarily, the students who manage the program determine at the end of each semester where the money will be donated but they also can hold special meals in case of particular disasters—such as the recent hurricanes—from which the proceeds go directly to that cause.

Shamp says typical participation at one of these meals ranges from 100 to 165 and is augmented by members of the outside community who pay cash that gets partially donated in the same way as the meal swipes.

Sustainability initiatives on the Wooster campus also extend to areas other than local sourcing. Dining at the all-you-care-to-eat Lowry and Kittredge dining venues is trayless and leftover food is separated out from dishes placed on the conveyor leading to the dishroom. That food waste—some 400 pounds worth a day—goes into a pulper to be ground into a slurry and then delivered to a nearby composting facility daily. Paper napkins and towels are made of unbleached, recycled fibers, and all metal, glass, plastic and cardboard from food packaging is recycled.

Students, faculty and staff have access to a reuseable travel mug supplied by Dining Services that generates a beverage discount to discourage the use of disposable cups. Also, takeout food from the all-you-care-to-eat dining venues can be packed in a washable/reuseable green container that students can fill with whatever they want for a dining hall swipe. The container is then returned to be washed and reused, eliminating the use of throwaway containers.

Wooster has an enrollment of around 2,000 with almost all students living on campus.