Mark This! is a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark’s varied lines of business. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them--building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
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Mark This! Podcast, Episode 26: Collaborative Culinary
Host: Heather Dotchel (she/her), Corporate Communications
It is time to Mark This!, a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs and projects that are happening all over Aramark's varied lines of business. I'm Heather Dotchel. As a member of Aramark's Communications team, I see and hear amazing things that are happening across our company every day. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them, building opportunity, building innovation, and building community. At the beginning of October, our campus partners at Boston University recently hosted the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative, the MCURC. The MCURC describes itself as a global network of colleges and universities using campus dining halls as living laboratories for behavior change.
They advance research focused on plant-forward diets, food waste reduction, and the drivers of consumer food choices, as well as co-create educational resources for the food service industry. The collaborative is an extension of Menus of Change: The Business of Healthy, Sustainable, Delicious Food Choices, an initiative from the Culinary Institute of America and Harvard, TH Chan's School of Public Health. Aramark has a long history with the Culinary Institute of America, in addition to its close work with the MCURC. Joining us today are Lexie Raczka and Andrea Catania from Boston University's Dining Program. Lexie is the sustainable director for Boston University Dining Services and Northeast Region Sustainability champion for Aramark Collegiate Hospitality. She participated in a panel discussion about creative culinary utilization in dining operations at the meeting, and another on data-driven waste reduction strategies.
Andrea is the co-manager of the MCURC Student Fellows Program and a graduate student at BU. She presented at the student Fellows Research Showcase at the annual meeting last month and moderated the fireside chat for administrators discussing meal plans, food insecurity, and the rising cost of higher education. We've also asked Chef Marion Gibson to talk about our robust history with the Culinary Institute of America. Chef Marion is the director of Culinary Development with the Aramark World Headquarters Innovation Kitchen. She is also Aramark's Culinary Liaison to the CIA for Leadership Initiatives. Welcome to the three of you, and thank you for coming on this episode of Mark This! So we're going to jump right into it. Lexie, can you give a quick rundown of what the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative is all about and its mission?
Of course, MCURC is a collaborative of over 70 institutions and organizations across the US and beyond, committed to the Menus of Change principles of healthy, sustainable dining with particular focuses on plant-forward diets, waste reduction, and food literacy. This collaborative really uses dining halls as a living laboratory, conducting operational research and supporting academic research in these focus areas. And additionally, MCURC is really a valuable knowledge sharing tool for different institutions and organizations to share their best practices, learnings, and support everyone as we're all advancing the same goal.
Andrea, how has the partnership between BU and Aramark helped support MCURC's goals?
I think that this is a good example of how working alongside food service leaders as well as scholars on an equal plane can bring about sustainable solutions. The way that the MCURC is set up, at least the way that the student fellows can engage with this, is there are opportunities for folks who are already working with dining or are already working in a sustainability capacity at their university to have these additional benefits folded in. So being able to create things that are tangible, tangible solutions and reshaping campus dining. There's an opportunity for students there who, like I said, are already working in the space to have these other things folded into their experience. So it's a bridge between their own campus and then the larger MCURC community.
Boston University Dining was the first outsourced dining program to join the MCURC, I believe. Chef Marion, what does that mean for the program, for Boston University, for Aramark and what factors led to BU Dining being accepted first?
Chef Marion Gibson (05:00):
Thank you, Heather, for including me in the podcast. This is an exciting opportunity for us to tell about how BU very especially and many other of our client partners in university and college realm have really engaged in the CIA and very specifically healthy menus and their research collaborative. So to answer your initial question there, the reason that BU was included with the MCURC is really the school's reputation. As food service partners with the university, we were really a catalyst to being able to share the information that the school felt was important for us to be able to share. So BU says "We want to join CIA and be part of this research collaborative."
And of course, as their client partners, we were then brought along with, I got wind of it, and we then started finding opportunities for Aramark as an enterprise because we already had relationships with Menus of Change and CIA and how we could from an enterprise perspective for all of our college and university line of business sponsor and be more heavily involved in that organization. So really it was BU's reputation, my nosiness, and then our opportunity to get other schools that were heavily involved in any of those initiatives that you've heard us talking about so far as a group and following the Menus of Change principles. So we have six additional schools that have joined since BU. We're very grateful for them taking that first step and we'll talk a little bit more about how we work with the CIA in general as an enterprise. But for our purposes here, BU took the first step and then we are just on their coattails.
Well, I, for one, appreciate your nosiness. So kudos.
Chef Marion Gibson (07:18):
Lexie, what specific things has dining done that align with MCURC's mission?
There are a lot of different initiatives that we have that align with MCURC's mission. If we break it down by MCURC focus area, one at a time, food waste reduction is really an emphasis of ours and something that we've dedicated a lot of time into and whether that be our Weigh the Waste programming for students, but more importantly for us to really understand what food students are wasting and being able to make data-driven decisions. The implementation of our Taste Don't Waste program in the dining hall so students can sample menu items before they commit to an entire portion and perhaps wasting food after they get a couple of bites in. This year, we participated in MCURC's Repurpose with a Purpose project, which was really exciting to be a part of collaborative operational research, developing a toolkit for other MCURC members and beyond to be able to utilize.
This year we're excited to participate in the new FoodWise project with MCURC as well, really letting our staff provide suggestions for us on how we can reduce food waste and we're holding a competition. We will then implement the winning idea from each of our dining halls and see the impact that that has in many other practices as well. Beyond waste reduction, plant-forward diets is something that we continue to push increasing our vegan and vegetarian options and particularly leaning into cuisines that are inherently more plant-based from a cultural perspective for that authenticity of flavor and cuisine. Additionally, from a food literacy perspective, we have the Coolfood Meals program in partnership with Aramark, which is across Collegiate Hospitality accounts in other lines of business as well. Andrea has actually conducted a lot of different tabling and trivia around food literacy in our dining halls, engaging with students on our different initiatives and efforts.
And then we've done additional engagement around particular initiatives, whether it is the introduction of our True Made Foods condiments in the dining halls and the story behind why we've made that change or the implementation of sustainability walls or more recently, a monthly sustainability newsletter, which is really broadcast our sustainability initiatives to the campus community as a whole. And then beyond those three pillar areas, other initiatives that we have that support the Menus of Change principles include our Choose to Reuse Reusable Container program with the idea of really designing sustainability into dining spaces, our local and sustainable and diverse sourcing priorities, and our long-standing partnership with Boston University Sargent Choice Nutrition Center, so that we can really make sure healthy food is the forefront and that we are driving that initiative as collaboratively as possible for the university.
Fantastic. So just a few things, just a small handful. Wow, that's a lot. And that's really incredible to hear. So let's narrow this down a little bit and talk about the meeting itself that happened in October. Andrea, what were some of the key highlights that you would like to share with our audience from the recent MCURC All-Member meeting?
I'm always thrilled when I interact with the cohort because I think that some groups might call themselves the collaborative, but it doesn't feel that collaborative, especially sometimes in academic spaces, but this doesn't feel that way at all. My interactions with MCURC, whether they're virtual or a couple of times a year when we've been able to meet in person, feel very friendly and warm, and it feels great to be around folks who have all kinds of different roles, but their passions are grounded in similar motivation. And so from what I understand, when they started the Menus of Change research collaborative, the focus was never to lose sight of the student piece that's involved. And I see how that lives and I see how that manifests and that it's not just a platitude. I see it living out and playing out, whether it's how students are involved in the research pieces, the academic side or in the operations side, but then also all of the extra things that get to happen.
Whether it's things that you can't quite put your finger on, things that are like getting sponsorship to be able to come to these kinds of meetings and things. And I think that that's the embodiment of what it means to center students, but then also including them in the programming. Like you mentioned in the beginning here, I was able to moderate a panel. We presented also about the student fellow program, so being able to fold students in and feature their work and also help them build their body of work. Some of these things are what I call the invisible parts of academia. Things that are a requirement in a way, but they're not so on the surface. But the way that Menus of Change centers those and the way that they allow them to play out is really a highlight for me.
Lexie, how do you see this partnership growing to tackle the challenges in higher ed, especially as we're helping to educate a generation to live healthier, more sustainable lives?
I think this is one of the greatest opportunities of MCURC, especially with the collaborative nature and the collective impact of the collaborative, which I think is one of the underlying priorities to not lose focus on. The impact that we can have, not only with the reach of all of the member institutions that are currently members, but the influence that we can have on these students as they become primary purchasers and influence their own lives for hopefully decades and decades to come and all of the people who their purchasing influences. So I think one of the opportunity areas is to really influence what becomes the norm for students and influence what and how they eat, reduce waste, and do other things related to sustainable and healthy food in their own lives.
More specifically to the Aramark partnership, I think there is an opportunity to continue to grow membership to include other client accounts. I know Marion mentioned there's currently six other institutions that are a part of MCURC. There's so much opportunity for more and more schools to continue to get involved. And then additionally, expanding participation in operational research projects to develop toolkits and other best practices for the industry and really drive change for those who aren't even a part of MCURC. And then finding ways to engage more students in MCURC, whether it's specific students through the Student Fellows program or engaging students at large through the different initiatives that relate to MCURC and the Menus of Change priorities and principles as well.
Well, thank you for that. I think all of us that support Collegiate Hospitality love when everything is student-centered and focused. So it's nice to hear the one, two message that Andrea put forth about research and the meeting itself and then future initiatives, Lexie. Chef Marion, the MCURC derives from an initiative put forward by the Culinary Institute of America. We have a long history with the CIA. Can you give us the timeline of that relationship?
Chef Marion Gibson (14:55):
Yeah, you bet. So Menus of Change is 13 years old, and there are principles that have changed very little in those 13 years that are really based on that Harvard Medical School definition of what healthy eating is. About five years in, the Business Leadership Council was created, and the purpose of the Business Leadership Council was to make sure that we had practical business solutions that are grounded in those principles for all segments of the industry. Farming, manufacturing, restaurants, hospitals, schools, and non-commercial business, which include things like colleges and universities. So 10 years ago we got wind of this, I'm nosy. We have established this already, and I started investigating what is Menus of Change? Does it have value for Aramark to participate in it? We decided that we did, at the time, the strongest collaborative and the only collaborative at that point was the Healthy Menus R&D Collaborative, and it was very much manufacturing restaurants and non-commercial business, which is what Aramark has a big foothold in.
And the point of that initially was to address sodium at the time, and because there are very strong connections between the CIA and the work that's being done by the FDA. So we're looking at what the FDA, it's not very exciting, but it was really valuable and important, especially as we use manufacturer partners for us to try to get ahead of some of these things. So the R&D Collaborative started there and then all of these other collaboratives started to spin off from it. So while we haven't been there from the beginning, we feel like we have. We are very proud sponsors of Menus of Change at large and all of the different collaboratives there included. As I said, we have members on the Business Leadership Council of which I'm one, trying to ground things in the business because we are all in a business of something. The Healthy Menus R&D Collaborative, where I co-lead a working group that focuses on collecting and sharing consumer data and then helping to shape the guest response and behaviors to making menus changes within their own dining styles.
So we can put things on a menu as often as we like, but unless the buys the menu, there's not a good business reason for it. There's a lot of trickle down. You can see how this starts to work. All of the collaboratives you heard the rest of the panelists talking about, all the things that we focus on are all about driving consumer. Part of that R&D collaborative always brings the things back to, does it have a sound business reason? Because that's how we get consumers to also make change. How do they make decisions at home? How do they make decisions outside of the home? You hear the word 'collaborative' a lot in Menus of Change. You've heard the testimonials of how it works. We collaborate within the collaborations. So HMC, that's that Healthy Menus Collaborative and MCURC collaborate together and oftentimes are at each other's conferences so that we can share information to each other.
It's really very dynamic and exciting. There are also the Healthy Kids Collaborative where we focus on children from kindergarten to 12th grade, and you can imagine that it's a very robust conversation there, especially as it comes to regulatory requirements. The government gives us requirements, but we still want to try to adhere to the Menus of Change principles and that generation is going to make a huge difference in how they respond to food, health and the planet in a way probably that no other generation really has before. Very exciting. So with that, we also have our other parts of relationship with the Culinary Institute of America that's very robust, things that you would expect from a restaurant company, which is recruiting, of course. We are constantly at the school hiring new chefs.
We have a great intern program where we include pre-graduates and oftentimes they end up coming and staying with us for long term, which is very exciting. Recruiting works at CIA, and then they have a very strong continuing education program called ProChef, of which there are three levels. And we have about 200 ProChef graduates per year from each level. So of the three levels, about 200 chefs go through that program each year. There's various opportunities. We respond to everything. We have so much data from so many different facets of the people that eat, which is all the people, that we are able to share surveys and consumer data. We do case studies, we share menus and recipe development and just on and on. Anything that you could think of that fits within feeding the people that eat. We will share that information and respond to CIA and Menus of Change.
Well, as a person that eats, I appreciate all of that very much. Want to know more about Aramark's work with sustainability and its relationship with the Culinary Institute? Visit our newsroom on Aramark.com to access more information. I'd like to thank Lexie, Andrea and Chef Marion for joining us. And thanks as always. To our Mark This! listeners...
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