Stanford University
OP-7: Low Impact Dining

R&DE Stanford Dining and R&DE Stanford Hospitality and Auxiliaries both use an enterprise software called EATEC to order products and to generate reports. EATEC helps manage inventory while lowering food and labor costs and increasing efficiency. We also ask our suppliers for reports that we cross-reference with the EATEC reports to ensure the reporting is correct.

Our Sustainable Food Program Manager runs reports throughout the year to ensure our chefs are complying with our sustainability standards. In R&DE Stanford Dining, those standards for animal products include: organic and local milk from Straus Creamery, grass-fed hamburgers from Bartels Farm, humane pork butt from Niman Ranch, wild Alaskan salmon from Taku River Reds fishery, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch approved seafood, pole and line caught canned tuna from American Tuna, and cage-free eggs from Wilcox Farms.

R&DE Stanford Dining provides vegan meals in all dining halls on all days. The dining halls have “Performance Dining” options that are all vegetarian, with at least one or two vegan options at lunch and dinner. Each Performance Dining area has a bean or tofu dish, whole grain dish, vegetable side, and leafy greens dish (i.e. chard, kale, spinach, etc.). R&DE Stanford Dining always provides at least one vegetarian soup, and many are vegan as well. Each of the 11 dining halls also has a make-your-own salad bar with homemade salad dressings. R&DE Stanford Dining labels all vegetarian and vegan options as well as the top eight allergens for all food. Vegetarian and vegan options are distinguished from each other. In addition, R&DE Stanford Dining runs free cooking classes for students throughout the year, including vegan classes. This past year, a vegan mushroom cooking class was offered that was very popular. Finally, R&DE Stanford Hospitality and Auxiliaries has vegan and vegetarian options in all cafes, catering operations, and concessions on campus. Both R&DE Stanford Dining and Stanford Hospitality and Auxiliaries’ dining facilities are open to all members of the campus community and their guests.

R&DE Stanford Dining and R&DE Stanford Hospitality and Auxiliaries is committed to reducing the impact of our animal-derived food purchases as much as we can. We also strive to constantly improve our Sustainable Food Program and continue to minimize our impact on the environment and purchase more humane options.

R&DE Stanford Dining partnered with the Stanford Design School and Stanford Medical School to run a study in the dining halls to determine how to get students to reduce meat consumption. We have taken the results from those studies and incorporated them in both the designs of our dining halls and our Performance Dining signage. Additionally, we design our menu to have plenty of delicious entrees and sides that do not have or do not focus on meat as the center of the plate. We are currently working with a PhD student in psychology to test which messages will encourage students to eat less meat. In 2013, R&DE Stanford Dining collaborated with students from the Green Living Council to pilot a project called “Mix-it-up Mondays” which is similar to Meatless Mondays. The students ran an education campaign about the environmental impact of meat eating and then created a cooking demo and make-your-own kamut bar to increase vegetarian meals.

R&DE Stanford Dining has standards for sustainable animal products (these are products that we always purchase, with no exceptions) including: organic and local milk from Straus Creamery, grass-fed hamburgers, humane pork butt from Niman Ranch, wild Alaskan salmon from Taku River Reds fishery, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch approved seafood, pole and line caught canned tuna from American Tuna, and cage-free eggs from Wilcox Farms. We added the organic and local milk (all types except chocolate milk because they do not make that) from Straus Creamery in September 2013 and added the American Tuna in August 2013. We increased the amount of wild Alaskan salmon we purchase directly from Taku River Reds, a family fishery, from 15,000 pounds to 25,000 pounds in school year 2013-14.

In spring 2013, R&DE Stanford Dining bought sustainably-raised, free-range, and local turkeys from BN Ranch for Easter dinner and other meals. We had a large outreach campaign to educate the campus community about why we chose these turkeys. We followed up that successful campaign with another one-time purchase of sustainably-raised, free-range, and local turkeys from Diestel Family Turkey Ranch for our 2013 Thanksgiving dinner.

R&DE Stanford Hospitality and Auxiliaries buys grass-fed beef from Bartels Farm, Marin Sun Farms, and Painted Hills Natural Beef, local, cage free eggs from Glaum Egg Ranch in Santa Cruz County, seafood approved by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and NOAA Fishwatch, and local, free range chickens from Mary’s Chicken and Petaluma Poultry. This past year, we added humanely raised pork ribs to the concessions at the Stanford football stadium.