Spring Update!

Starting on July 1st of the 2018-2019 school year, Northwestern University experienced a major shift in its on-campus dining experience. The university signed onto a new partnership with Compass Group in April 2018, replacing Sodexo, their previous dining service provider. Along with bringing in transformed dining halls, new menus, and the opening of several restaurants on campus, Compass Group also brought in new sustainability goals and initiatives. One of these efforts included hiring a sustainability manager with a team of interns intent on continuing and improving the school's pledge to purchasing more real food as defined by the Real Food Challenge, and having the dining budget comprise of at least 20% Real Food by 2020. While Sodexo had employed ten separate interns for up to 5 hours per person to audit the dining supply chain for real food items, Compass Group streamlined the process this year to delegate the auditing responsibility to one single intern working up to 15 hours a week.

There were several challenges to address in achieving this new goal of increasing the Real Food percentage. One such challenge was the worry of not being able to improve the percentage based on the sheer volume of food purchased. To shift even a few percentage points would mean a dramatic shift of food purchasing behavior. Additionally, there was the challenge of not being able to purchase certain produce items locally in the winter, as those produce items would have to be grown remotely or in a greenhouse as they are not in season. Eventually, Compass Group was able to overcome these challenges by creating a game plan of purchasing as much local and organic produce, dairy, and meat products as possible.

This year, Compass Group took the initiative to reach out to a plethora of new distributors, farms, and businesses in the effort of increasing Northwestern's supply of local, ecologically sound, humane, and fair food. Garfield Produce, located just 13 miles from campus in the West Side of Chicago, is a prime example of a new partnership that Compass Group has helped bring to fruition. In the course of working with them for less than a year, Garfield Produce has been able to double their production of hydroponically-grown microgreens. A partnership with Co-op Hot Sauce, located just four miles from campus, is yet another accomplishment that Compass Group is proud to announce. In addition to sourcing ingredients from local Midwestern farmers, Co-op is also a non-profit that sends half of its proceeds towards funding youth arts and entrepreneurship programs. Seven different Co-op hot sauces are served in all of Northwestern's dining halls, including a custom-made hot sauce for the school itself which is of course purple! Compass Group is also working with Local Foods, a Chicago-based foods distributor to bring more local produce items and liquid cage-free eggs onto campus. On Thursdays, a complimentary local market is held to promote healthy eating and showcase the wide variety of local produce sourced from Local Foods and Midwest Foods that Northwestern purchases for its dining halls. Compass Group has also reduced Northwestern's meat purchasing significantly and holds campus-wide events like vegan challenges in the effort to promote plant-forward eating that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, all of the halal chicken in the school's dining supply chain has been shifted to be purchased only locally.

In striving to purchase more local and organic produce, meat, and dairy, as well as fair trade coffee and ecologically sound wild-caught seafood, Compass Group has successfully achieved a preliminary percentage of 14.8% real food. Compared to 2017-2018's percentage of 8%, and 2016/2017's percentage of 5%, this is a huge success!