Highlights of the APRIL 2012 Issue
FOOD WASTE MANAGEMENT:
• Laying a Foundation of Sustainability
A lot of food is produced at Kendall
College in Chicago, Ill.
“Our culinary arts school,
which is quite frankly one of the best in
the country, is a very intense system in
which we use a lot of food,” said Christopher
Koetke, CEC, CCE, vice president,
School of Culinary Arts. “That is just
what we do because we are committed
to super-high education and high quality.
We use an awful lot of food. We also provide
the food service for the entire campus
and through two different restaurants.”
Sustainability has been a topic of
great importance in the education of its
culinary students. “We have been very
committed to all things sustainable now
going on about seven years,” he said.
“Waste was one of the first things that
we tackled. We started composting as
one of our first initiatives. Since then,
we have done a lot of other things, including
educating a lot of other people
around the country about how to teach
sustainability in culinary education and
how to implement sustainable initiatives
in different operations, whether it is a
school or a foodservice business.” ...
• Green Efforts at The Bay View Café
The Bay View Café at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory on the campus of the University
of California-Berkeley tries to operate
as sustainably as possible.
The café, which has been operated
by the Epicurean Group for the last
year, offers a wide range of services to
the labs. “We run the café for breakfast
and lunch,” said Brian Barisione, district
manager with the Epicurean Group.
“We also provide a wide range of catering
to them at the lab. We do a lot of catering
with the university itself. We bid
against other caterers on the campus.”
Bay View features several concepts.
“We have a grill concept which is basically
anything that you can think of
that would be produced on a grill,” he
said. “We also have a fresh, made-toorder
deli station and a tossed-to-order
salad station. The tossed-to-order salad
station is unique in that the salads presented
in that, you can get as a tossedto-
order salad, a wrap or as a sandwich. ...
• Denison Promotes Composting
In an effort to increase the amount of post-consumer
food waste composted on campus, Dining
Services at Denison University in Granville,
Ohio, in conjunction with the school's Office of
Sustainability, recently hosted a week-long promotion
educating students on the benefits.
Dining Services weighed all of its post-consumer
food waste for a three-week period — the
week before, the week of and the week after the
promotion. “We tracked our total pounds of compost
per meal we served, broken down to tens of
ounces,” said Niles Gebele, general manager with
Sodexo, the campus foodservice provider. “We
took our total pounds and divided it by the meals
to come up with a ratio. We did it a week before
the promotion, the week of the promotion and the
week after the promotion. The first week was a
baseline. Obviously, we would see a spike during
the promotion week and we really wanted to see
how well it stuck.” ...
• Keeping Waste To A Minimum at Villanova
For more than 50 years, food waste management has been
an important topic on the campus of Villanova University
in Philadelphia, Pa.
“I am looking back on all the different efforts in aligned
purposes and performances,” said James Kolumban, RD, LDN,
associate director of Dining Services. “It goes back over 50
years, beginning with composting and managing pre- and postconsumer
waste.”
In the last year, to track and help reduce its pre-consumer
waste, Dining Services has begun using LeanPath to weigh
it. “What is interesting about the tool that we implemented in
the past year is that it really causes you to step back and take
a look because you are continually taking snapshots of how
you run your business,
i.e. pre-consumer waste
that is involved leading
up to the presentation of
the food for the customer
to taste,” he said. ...
Read the complete FOOD WASTE MANAGEMENT ...
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
Cambridge launched its first comprehensive board plan,
it wanted to open a flagship meal plan operation at the same time.
That operation is The Howard Dining Hall in Maseeh Hall, one
of five board operations on campus. “The institute will go through
and target buildings for complete renovations, and that was one that
was targeted several years ago,” said Michael Myers, assistant director
of MIT Dining. “They completely gutted the entire building to make
more room for residential use. With that building being done, it was
also determined that it would be fantastic to house our flagship meal
plan operation.”
Prior to the renovation, Maseeh Hall only served as residential housing
with no foodservice operations. “This was a very historical building on
campus and throughout the renovation process through the entire building,
MIT and the whole team did a fantastic job in preserving the historical, classical
look and feel of the building,” he said. “It is a good mixture of modern
and classical architecture, and it is still a very warm and inviting facility.”
Read more MIT Dining's Flagship ...
WORLD CUISINE:
Each week, students at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro take a surprise culinary journey without
leaving campus at Passport Station.
“Passport Station is a pop-up restaurant concept,” said Kevin
Deans, Dining Services director with Chartwells, the campus
foodservice provider. “The thought of the pop-up concept was
kind of unique to do — popping a concept into an existing
station to change it.”
One day each week, one of the existing stations is transformed
into the Passport Station, which features a different
cuisine. “We have featured Mexican, Japanese and Carolina
barbecue,” he said. “We did Austria with a dessert theme. We are
doing Dim Sum and we are doing England with fish and chips.” ...
• Penn State Celebrates Diversity
To celebrate the diverse population on campus, the Office of
Student Affairs and the department of Housing and Food
Services at Pennsylvania State (Penn State) University
Hazleton, recently presented a Cultural Expo with education
and food.
“The expo highlights the diverse student body at Penn State
Hazleton, which currently enrolls 1,300 students from countries
as far away as India and states as far away as Minnesota,”
said Jonathan Kukta, director of Housing and
Food Services for Penn State Hazleton and
Penn State Schuylkill. “Being Housing
and Dining Services, diversity is a
big part of our mission for the
campus. It is incredible for
students, faculty and staff
to taste all of the different
foods from the different
cultures and have an understanding
and a greater
appreciation for them.”
The event featured 25
banquet tables offering
information and traditional
dishes from the different
countries and regions the
student population
represents. ...
Read the complete WORLD CUISINE ...
