Major
Business Administration
Anticipated Graduation Year
2024
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Our current food systems are largely profit driven and create negative environmental externalities such as pollution and excess waste (Barlett, 2017). Colleges and universities are unique in that they have a large potential to create a change in the food system through changes in their institutional purchasing habits. Higher education purchasing offers a unique opportunity to shift consumer demands to these sorts of products. In addition, this purchase poses a unique opportunity to support and uplift historically disenfranchised BIPOC producers. Loyola University Chicago is a private Jesuit institution in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, situated on the north side. Loyola has its own school dedicated to environmental sustainability. The objective of this research is to identify opportunities and barriers to large-scale institutional purchasing from BIPOC and local sustainable producers. This research aims to explore the process of implementing sustainable purchasing at a university that is in contract with a large vendor. This research was conducted via interviews. To gain the perspective of the institutional actors, Aramark staff and LUC were interviewed. Interviews were used to construct a thematic analysis to identify converging ideas in participant responses. The interview with Aramark representatives revealed that local vendors experience hurdles such as inability to scale to consumer demand, seasonality mismatch, and costly health and safety requirements that can be difficult to navigate legally. BIPOC vendors are also challenged with difficulty meeting demand and health and safety requirements. Aramark is currently working with food hubs to aggregate local food from small farmers. Aramark has launched initiatives to help BIPOC producers meet health, safety, and insurance requirements to increase the amount of BIPOC produced foods being served.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Tania Schusler
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Generating Equity within the Food System Through Institutional Purchasing
Our current food systems are largely profit driven and create negative environmental externalities such as pollution and excess waste (Barlett, 2017). Colleges and universities are unique in that they have a large potential to create a change in the food system through changes in their institutional purchasing habits. Higher education purchasing offers a unique opportunity to shift consumer demands to these sorts of products. In addition, this purchase poses a unique opportunity to support and uplift historically disenfranchised BIPOC producers. Loyola University Chicago is a private Jesuit institution in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, situated on the north side. Loyola has its own school dedicated to environmental sustainability. The objective of this research is to identify opportunities and barriers to large-scale institutional purchasing from BIPOC and local sustainable producers. This research aims to explore the process of implementing sustainable purchasing at a university that is in contract with a large vendor. This research was conducted via interviews. To gain the perspective of the institutional actors, Aramark staff and LUC were interviewed. Interviews were used to construct a thematic analysis to identify converging ideas in participant responses. The interview with Aramark representatives revealed that local vendors experience hurdles such as inability to scale to consumer demand, seasonality mismatch, and costly health and safety requirements that can be difficult to navigate legally. BIPOC vendors are also challenged with difficulty meeting demand and health and safety requirements. Aramark is currently working with food hubs to aggregate local food from small farmers. Aramark has launched initiatives to help BIPOC producers meet health, safety, and insurance requirements to increase the amount of BIPOC produced foods being served.