Meredith College

• Type: Private, 4 yr, 1000-5000
• Region: Southeast
• City: Raleigh
• State: NC
• URL: http://www.meredith.edu
• involvement in the Real Food Challenge?
  Level 1: Connected to the network
• Provider: Aramark
• On campus concessions: The Beehive serves Chik-fil-a once a week
• Dining Services Director/Executive Chef: David Frankel
• Needs and challenges: Our biggest challenge is creating a menu that includes vegetarian options and local/organic foods. We have both vegetarian options and local foods in our dining hall, but in small amounts. I think the amount of local food in our dining hall is 10%. Even though we are a small private college, there is still a lack of communication on where our food is coming from. Our school is trying to get students to fill out surveys on what they want in our dining hall, and there has been a significant increase on campus with better dining options.
• Successes and achievements: Our dining hall is somewhat better than it was last year with better dining options. The chefs are trying to integrate different kinds of foods into the menu. Our dining hall has also switched from plastic cups to cups made from corn, and even switched from plastic cutlery to forks made from bamboo. We have also adopted food composting in the dining hall to compost 100% of all of our food waste. They are trying to change for us, they just need that extra support to get things in motion.
• Composting: pre-consumer food waste, post-consumer food waste, food waste from special events, other organic waste
• Food activities: student farm/garden, local purchasing, student organizations