Sodexo has recently made an effort to use locally- and regionally-produced and grown foods. Within the last school year, over 23% of the produce served in the dining hall, from potatoes to lettuce, was grown within 250 miles of Houghton. Despite a decrease in students, there has been a steady increase in the local and regional produce being served.
However, there is a limit to the local places from which Sodexo make make purchases. For instance, there are guidelines that prevent Sodexo from purchasing food from farms that have not gone through a process of meeting safety regulations. These regulations help companies track the source of contaminated foods as well as other routine safety measures that benefit consumers’ health. Tina Powers, general manager, stressed that Sodexo loves the small farmer and small businesses. These are the places that are making new things and doing it with quality. A large company like Sodexo has the means to purchase large amounts of product that can greatly benefit a local economy.
Many of the gluten-free products available in the dining hall comes from a shop in Ithaca, NY. All of the dairy products used by Sodexo at Houghton are from a local company. Sodexo is also willing to work with any small farm that wants to make the transition to become a Sodexo supplier. For example, Powers shared an anecdote of a sunflower farmer who wanted to sell his sunflower oil to Houghton and they helped him make connections with the people who could help him be inspected and regulated. However, when safe, sometimes Sodexo finds ways to work around the strict guidelines. During homecoming, Powers went out and purchased bags of potatoes from a local farmer to make the dining hall’s salt potatoes.
Two students who have worked for Sodexo for multiple years expressed the significance of local foods and in-house processed foods in the dining hall’s offerings. Emily Raczelowski, junior, sees the value value of using more local products in its reduced cost and reduced environmental impact because of transportation. Jonathan Hardy, senior, said, “Over the last four years I noticed a gradual increase in quality and variety of offerings. This year is, of course, the largest change yet.”
This semester, the dining hall made a change to serving more foods that have been processed in-house. The rationale behind this was that the food had to be processed somewhere and that food is the best quality when it is processed as close as possible to the time it is served. Raczelowski said that “the benefit of processing whole foods in-house is that as an employee I can see firsthand what is being done to my food.” Most of the salad bar as well as ingredients in the soup and other areas are now all prepared in the kitchen. This is of nutritional and other health benefits. Powers mentioned the shredded carrots on the salad bar. They are not as good when they have been pre-shredded and packaged and have added ingredients to keep them fresh. One might have also noticed the lettuce on the salad bar is not the same lettuce that comes mixed with carrots and cabbage in a bag. Powers discussed the fact that the salad is now often browning on the salad bar. This is because it is fresh and has not been treated to prevent browning.
Cafeteria workers have also been trying to find ways to process whole foods as close to the serving time as possible. The drawback to this new policy is that, even though they save on money on produce because they are not paying someone else to process it, they have had to increase labor and pay for more waste removal. Powers feels that the benefits strongly outweigh the increased cost.