Demand for local food has increased dramatically from all corners of American society in the past few years. And no one has been more active in demanding it than college students, who are required by contracts or practical necessity to eat at campus dining services. Many have decided they are sick of the usual cafeteria fare and are organizing for change.
From UCLA to Harvard, University of Minnesota to Appalachian State, and everywhere in between, colleges trumpet their local food initiatives, especially in marketing to prospective students. The National Association of College & University Food Services has “sustainability case studies” on its website and in perusing them, one gets the impression that buying local is almost a competitive sport among dining services.  Harvard claims that 25% of the food budget is spent on local products. Princeton says 52% is local. The Rochester Institute of Technology claims 75.6% local.

However, the definition of “local food” varies considerably from one institution to the next. Is some cases, it’s defined as food produced within 100 miles; in other places, it’s defined as coming from that state. The local category often includes products such as locally roasted coffee and locally baked bread. In some parts of the country, industrial-scale farms are local, so they get included in the statistics.

Without a clear view of what constitutes local food, it’s somewhat difficult to assess the opportunity that colleges might offer to small farmers. Certainly, there is interest on the part of many college administrators to get local food on the menu. But few colleges can buy from individual farmers because the quantities they need are just too large. Even a small private college might serve 20,000-plus meals a week.

For small-scale growers, the best option for selling to colleges is through a distributor or marketing cooperative. Those are springing up all over the country, as growers realize they need to pool harvests to sell to big accounts like hospitals, colleges, and supermarkets. In an upcoming issue of GFM, you’ll read more about growers who have started their own aggregation and distribution services. Growers in the 10-acres-plus category may be able to provide sufficient volume to sell individually.

One consideration in selling to colleges is that demand is primarily in fall, winter, and spring. But that makes summer a good time to start making connections and exploring the possibilities for season extension and storage crops. If you want to pursue this new market for high-volume sales, there are a few things you should know.

Management services
At most colleges, food service is not handled by the college itself but is contracted out to a corporate management service such as Sodexo, Aramark, or Bon Appetit. These services manage many corporate dining services as well, creating even more opportunity for sales once a relationship is established.

Clearly, these management companies see local food as important to their brands. Sodexo, which serves 650 colleges, claims “more than half the produce we serve in season is locally grown.” Aramark, with 600 colleges, promises to increase locally sourced food by 5% per year.

Bon Appetit has been a leader in the local food movement, buying from farmers long before it was trendy. It launched a Farm to Fork program in 1999, committing to purchase at least 20% of its food within 150 miles of its kitchens. Last year, the company brought in 538 new Farm to Fork vendors for a total of 1,000 small, owner-operated farms and artisan producers. To get there, the company made 15 of its top managers and chefs into foragers who fanned out looking for local suppliers within 150 miles of its kitchens. The company holds one Eat Local day each year, where all its kitchens serve only local food, and the chefs take up the challenge with gusto. A few years ago, for example, a chef at an Oregon dining hall went to the coast and collected sea water and boiled it down for salt.

Growers interested in working with a Bon Appetit dining service are advised to go meet the chef and general manager. He or she has purchasing power, so building a relationship is important.

Brett Grohsgal of Even Star Farm in Maryland has been selling to American University’s dining service through Bon Appetit for a decade. Four years ago, Bon Appetit was bought by another entity and now is less flexible, more corporate, he said. For example, he used to get paid in 15 days; now it’s usually a month “and I’ve waited as long as seven weeks,” he said. “The good thing is volume. They can take 800 pounds of watermelon and ask for more the next week. In late August, we’ll be selling $1,200 to $1,400 a week to American University.”

David Hoyle of Creative Growers in Oregon said he and his wife, Lori, also have a decade of experience supplying Bon Appetit dining halls at three colleges. “The checks come in on time from the corporate office and their scale and desire to work with local growers is very appealing to us,” David said.

Wisconsin
The local food experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is illustrative of the problems and potential of selling to colleges. Dining halls are operated as an independent business with no financial support from the university, so they have to do a lot of test marketing to determine what works.

The university’s total annual food budget is more than $8.5 million to feed the 16,000 students, faculty, and staff who eat on campus. In 2009-2010, 11.2% of the budget was spent on locally produced food — although 65% of that category went to the university dairy, said Julie Luke of the Division of University Housing. “Local,” by the way, means grown in Wisconsin.

The biggest problem the dining service has encountered is an irregular supply of local staples, especially the prewashed and cut vegetables usually purchased, according to a recent report “Scaling Up: Meeting the Demand for Local Food.” Local food tends to be used as “culinary accents” but the university does plan to incorporate fresh product receiving and washing facilities at new food service locations.

The dining service was inundated by too many suppliers delivering in too many trucks, so decided to streamline purchases to about 40 suppliers. They don’t buy directly from farmers because none can supply the quantity they need, but they do buy from a local marketing consortium called Simply Wisconsin.

They also have found that local is more important than organic to students. After offering one organic entree every day for a year, priced higher than its non-organic counterpart, they decided to cut back because enough students weren’t willing to pay more. They have since aligned themselves with a Slow Food student group and are featuring locally sourced meals in one dining hall once a week. There’s also a new “Green House” residence hall with 60 students who are committed to an environmentally responsible lifestyle. They get 10-15 locally sourced menu options a week, Luke said.

Michigan
A nonprofit organization dedicated to creating economic development around local food set up a “meet and greet” event a few years ago at which farmers could get together with institutional buyers. Jane Bush was there in her capacity as coordinator of the Grazing Fields Cooperative, a group of nine farmers who pool eggs, fruit and vegetables for wholesale sales.

“The University of Michigan really saw buying local as something they wanted to do,” she said. “We got pulled into the market. It doesn’t work to push it on an institution — you really have to have a willing gatekeeper who has the power to open that gate for you.”

Once the coop realized that the university was serious about buying local, “there had to be commitments on the growers’ part” to grow enough to supply them, Bush said. “The demand is huge and the potential for on-farm income is very good.”

The university has been buying an average of $1,500 per week from the coop during the growing season.
Another cooperative of high tunnel growers, the Four Season Produce Coop, has recently organized to sell to institutions in winter. It has seven growers with 12 high tunnels among them. “We just delivered our first 80 pounds of hoophouse spinach,” Bush said in early March.

A growing demand
Interest in local food on campus is likely to increase, thanks to student demand. The Real Food Challenge, a national network of students interested in sustainable food issues, now claims 3,000 members on 350 campuses. They held five regional summits this year to learn about food activism and how to implement a sustainability agenda for campus dining.

The Real Food Challenge is not limited to local food. It also includes food that is “fair, ecologically sound, and humane.” The organization has created a calculator to help dining services evaluate all those factors when purchasing. So far, 38 colleges have used the calculator to improve their food quality.

Tim Galarneau, a Real Food Challenge national coordinating team member, cited the University of California system as an example of the group’s work. Ten UC campuses developed a policy in 2009 to use 20% “real food” by 2020. Last year, the percentages ranged from 12 to 20%, signifying an $80 million a year shift in food purchases, he said.
The policy applies to vendors such as Subway, which have outlets in some university buildings. Although they aren’t required to have 20% real food, they are aware that the policy is going to affect future contract negotiations, Galarneau said.