When designing menus, draw ideas and inspiration from local farmers and their crops during your growing season. The advantages of local sourcing include working with smaller producers who may be more willing to experiment with varieties that bring interest and more excellent flavour to the table. A focus on local foods also can play an essential role in building community by encouraging school children, retailers, media, and others to learn how to grow food, steward the land, and adopt healthier eating habits.
The first stop you must consider here is menu cycles and seasonality. Having a recipe bank of items you have tried, tested and approved that teams can slot into menus is a better way to approach Menus of Change for plated food services rather than a fixed three-week menu cycle. This gives you (and your Chefs) more flexibility and reduces the workload to respond to seasonality (as it does move according to weather), makes you nimble when dealing with out of stocks, shortages and, best of all, takes advantage of Greengrocers ‘special lists’ and gluts of produce.
Most greengrocers have daily lists of items that are either short-dated (but perfectly useable) or items that have a glut. For example, in 2021, we made full use of a massive surplus of UK-grown celeriac that was effectively being given away or would be sent to composting. We did have to temper how much we used, and it has since become a regular fixture on our menus as it is relatively cheap and popular.
Working with local farmers is hugely exciting and financially a no-brainer. The short supply chains are less exposed to global market movements giving you more certainty and reliability. Your local NFU branch is a wealth of information and expertise to help you find farmers looking for markets for their produce. Treat them with respect and help them navigate university procedures, and you’ll have a small army of reliable, stable and local suppliers. We have had three occasions in the last 18 months where various national wholesalers have had significant issues at a local level with their depots/IT systems, severely disrupting supplies but have been ‘saved’ by our local supplier base. Nearly everything we buy locally costs less than through our core TUCO suppliers – this isn’t because those suppliers are ripping us off, but short supply chains have less cost to start with – most of ours’s consist of the farmer and the University only.
On Campus food production is another exciting area, Universities such as Harper Adams and Chester are leading the way in this field,, from meat to honey. We are lucky, like Harper Adams, to have our own farms, so we haven’t, for example,, purchased any real volume of beef externally since 2018, and are now working to introduce hydroponically grown salad. Self-grown ideas don’t need to be hard – growing rosemary outside one of our buildings cost us £200 to set up and provides a year around supply.
The absolute key to this principle is embracing local producers (not to be confused with suppliers such as farm shops, small wholesalers etc, who are not the same) and being creative. This principle provides limitless fun (and money-saving!), and as with the whole of Menus of Change, every University implements differently, providing a fantastic amount of diversity in approach.
