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TOONG: Things have changed dramatically in the 16 years since I’ve been at UMass. The difference between us and a restaurant
is that we are serving the same customers, our students, several times a day. We have to listen closely. Students now demand food that tastes good and is good for them but also supports the envi- ronment. They care deeply about animal welfare. They want us to ensure what we do supports the local and regional economy.
DISTEFANO: We survey students a couple of times a year. We send out 4,000 surveys, and we receive roughly a 40 percent response rate, year after year. In terms of trends, we definitely see students eating more fruits and vegetables. Students are also asking for more plant-based proteins. Thirty-five percent say they eat less red meat since they started at UMass. Eighty-six percent want healthier beverages.
Students are also more mindful about what they’re eating. “Local” to students means that the food is tied back to the community, but 72.5 percent say it is healthier as well. They want traceability, they want it closer to them, they want a story behind it.
IDEAS: You’ve increased your procurement of local food to more than $1 million annually. How does your system work?
TOONG: Ten or 12 years ago, like everyone else, we were buying mostly from the typical conventional food distributors. We said to ourselves, this is not enough, we should be able to do better. For every product we purchased, we started to ask, can we buy this locally instead?
We began to focus on culinary excellence, hiring an executive chef and inviting in several guest chefs, locally and nationally, to enhance our program. Then we partnered with [local farmer] Joe Czajkowski, who acts as an aggregator (or broker) for our suppliers, other local farms, connecting us to 16 or 20 farmers. We even started crop planning prior to the growing season, so they grow what we use.
DISTEFANO: Obviously, New England’s seasons determine a lot of our growing season, although you’d be surprised, sometimes we still get fresh tomatoes into November around here. But by December, January, February, March, things get a little tight, so we utilize a process called individual quick freezing. We’ll get six to eight thousand pounds of strawberries and blueberries and freeze them and use them in our
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