The goal of this toolkit is to help you figure out what local and sustainable food is available in your region, what of it your university could be buying, and what’s missing to make this happen. By the end of using this toolkit, you’ll know a lot more about the agricultural industry of your area– not just how it’s working now, but how it got to where it is, who’s involved in shaping its future, and how your campus can help.

1. SUPPLY
CHAIN
ASSESSMENT
TOOLKIT
BLURB

2. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 2
The Campus Food Systems Project builds the student movement to
get healthy, local sustainable food onto university campuses in Canada. The CFSP
launched in October 2011 to work with campuses across the country. The project
aims to help students improve the multi-stakeholder organizing, procurement
practices, and research capacity of their institutions. By doing so, students have
unlocked the potential for Universities to lead the healthy, local and sustainable
food movement.
The resources used, best practices developed, and lessons learned from these
campuses are shared on studentfood.ca to inspire and support change on
campuses nationwide.
This project was developed by Sierra Youth Coalition and Meal Exchange, two
national organizations with over 20 years of experience bringing students, faculty
and administration together on university campuses to deliver social justice
and environmental programs. The partnership of our organizations on this
initiative was supported by three years of funding from the J.W. McConnell Family
Foundation.
For questions or further support, contact national@studentfood.ca
Sierra Youth Coalition
1 Nicholas, Suite 1510-1
K1N 7B7
Ottawa, ON
(613) 241-1615
syc-cjs.org
Meal Exchange
365-401 Richmond Street
M5V 3A8
Toronto, ON
(416) 657-4489
www.mealexchange.com
This toolkit was last updated May 2014.
This work is license under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
To view a copy at this license, visit: http//:creativecommons.org/license/by-nc-nc/3.0/

3. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 3
Introduction and goals
A supply chain, in food systems terms, is the processes of food from seed to compost. This includes
where and how food is moving and the practices used in and on its journey. This toolkit will help
you figure out how you can help your campus create a more connected, local and sustainable
supply chain. This toolkit will help you find the local and sustainable food available in your region,
and if/how your campus could be purchasing more of it! To map this out, you may want to talk
to producers, producer unions, processors, distributors, and non-profit organizations in your
community. After using this toolkit, you’ll know a lot more about the agricultural industry of your
area– not just how it’s working now, but how it got to where it is, who’s involved in shaping its future,
and how your campus can help.
Good Practices and Lessons Learned from Other Campuses
Before you embark on a Supply Chain Assessment journey, take a look at these examples below
to see what other campuses across Canada are doing to purchase more local and sustainable
food. These examples are meant to be a source of inspiration and potential models to help you
demonstrate the role campuses have in building just and sustainable food systems.
Seed to Plate
Since 2009, students at McGill have been bringing together stakeholders on their campus to
reimagine their food system through the McGill Feeding McGill program. By connecting their
Executive Chef and the Macdonald Campus Farm’s Horticultural manager, there have been huge
strides to connect their food from seed to plate. The link with its own farm has helped McGill
purchase 41% of its produce locally, 30% beef and 100% eggs from their own farm.
Waterloo’s St. Paul’s Greenhouse Garden is a student-led initiative for students to sow, grow, and
harvest food that will be used in their dining halls on campus. Students built a relationship with
Chartwell’s and their food and dining manager to support this initiative.

4. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 4
Ethical Sourcing
• UBC has created a Sustainable Food Guide that helps foster a culture of sustainability in
procurement and operations. This includes a list of products that can be procured locally
and seasonally which was put together by a local non-profit organization. Here is a video
from an inspiring UBC Chef!
• Ryerson’s Executive Chef cares about good food and supporting good people. Not only does
she use small scale distributors to support local farmers, but she also purchases directly
from local bakers and cheese makers.
• St. Francis Xavier has committed to serving Fair Trade coffee and tea through their work with
Sodexo.
• The Vancouver Island Community Research Alliance prepared a great report titled
“Institutional Purchasing on Vancouver Island - Lessons learned from the University
of Victoria.” See the case study on the University of Victoria (pages 13-20), and their
approach to structuring working with distributors, for some ideas of the type of changes you
could discuss with stakeholders at your campus.
Some things to keep in mind
Identify low-hanging “fruit” for local and sustainable purchases: It’s likely that there are is a lot of
changes that could be made to improve your campuses purchasing practices. Hopefully the examples
above gave you some inspiration. Determining a few changes that are relatively quick and easy to
achieve is a good way to build some momentum. The more you prove that finding local and sustainable
producers is doable, that their products maintain quality and competitive prices, and that students
appreciate them, the more open everyone should be to continue making changes.
Easy changes in purchasing could take many shapes:
• Highlight local producers at a “Local Food Day” meal or celebration (see St. FX’s Spring Fling
Local Menu)
• Map out what is available seasonally and request that your campus purchases only local
produce in season from your distributor
• Request only local/organic grains, such as oats from your campus distributor
• Work with local producers/processors who sell frozen fruits and vegetables, such as berries,
peas and carrots
• Switch to local maple or birch syrup, honey and sprouts!
• Speak with your chef to determine more easy switches to support local and sustainable
purchasing. This is a great opportunity for “good media” for your dining halls!

5. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 5
Work with existing distributors:
Big distributors like Sysco and Gordon Food Service bring food from very far away to your campus.
But chances are pretty good that they also carry local products too. It’s also pretty likely that they are
bringing additional local products, if they know it is a priority for your campus. Moreover, its likely that
your campus is purchasing from multiple distributors - one for meats, one for dairy, one for produce
etc. Find out who these distributors are and how you can work with them.
Distributors are really good at what they do, and like the food service provider, their priority is working
with their clients. Sitting down with them (and ideally, with your purchaser along to back you up) to
show that your campus wants to change where your food is coming from, can yield some impressive
results. Many students have gone to visit their distributors’ warehouse with their food service provider
to understand how they work and see what their interest and capacity for changing is.
Work with local producers:
As the McGill example demonstrates, producers can play a key role in supporting local, sustainable
products in dining halls. Working with your food service team to find a keen producer who’s looking for
an institutional market can be a great way to ensure that there will be local and sustainable products
on your plates. This example of a hospital in Orillia, ON demonstrates how institutions can provide
stable purchasing to help producers grow food with agro-ecological methods.
Making changes in contracts and Requests for Proposals:
Including a minimum requirement for or commitment to local, sustainable food in your Request
for Proposals and Contracts is a great way to ensure that your campus Food Service Provider
and Distributors do their best to source local and sustainable foods. If you are in the middle of a
contract, it will be important to work with your food services team to identify how you can work better
to achieve your common goals. Look into your Food Services and University’s mission and vision.
How can procuring local and sustainable food achieve the mission of your campus?
Visit studentfood.ca for inspiration of what other campuses are doing and how your campus can join
the local, sustainable and healthy food movement.

6. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 6
Questions to consider
The Big Question: Where could our food be coming from, and can you make it happen?
Local Production
• Who’s producing food in your area? What type of operations are they: farms, ranches,
fisheries, or a combination of the three?
• What types of products are being produced? How does this fit with the specific crops and
products that your university is looking to order?
• On what scale are these products being produced? Are local producers able to provide as
much as your university is looking to buy? Could they produce more, if they knew the
university would buy it?
• How are these products being produced? Is ecological consideration, humane treatment
of animals and labour rights a strength of producers, or a major challenge? Is there an
existing market for just and sustainably-produced food in your community, or could one be
built, with the help of your university?
Local Distribution
• How are producers getting their food to market? Are they selling at farmers markets
and CSAs, to local distributors, to national distributors, or for international distribution?
Are producers interested in selling to your university?If they are, would they be interested in
increasing sales to your university? Would an arrangement to deliver the products and
manage payment be necessary? What would this arrangement need to look like to work for
the producers and for your university?
• Are there processors and distributors in your region that work with local producers? Are
they established and successful, struggling to stay afloat, or just starting up? Are there plans
to create new enterprises? How can your university use the strengths of the existing system,
and help to support any new developments?
• Who can help figure this all out, and who’s working on it already? Can you find champions
in producer unions, a provincial or local department of agriculture, regional or local non-
profits, community development organizations, or other universities and colleges, schools,
and hospitals?

7. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 7
Suggested actions
1. Meet with your food service provider to discuss what they’re already doing, and to get
them on board with your plans for the Supply Chain Assessment. Using some of the
questions to consider above, determine which distributors or suppliers would be good to
meet with to determine how they can help your campus get more local, sustainable products.
2. Start meeting with local institutions, restaurants and organizations in similar situations, to
discuss best practices and shared opportunities.
3. Start meeting with local and regional groups who could support your work (non-profits,
Community Futures, local business/co-op development groups etc.)
4. Share the story of this work. Post the changes in your dining hall with features of producers
and processors. Find ways to share the story in the media as U of T and Ryerson have!
How this ties into the bigger picture
Food Service Overview and Purchasing Baseline: This Supply Chain Assessment toolkit is meant to
be used after you’ve got a good understanding of how food services work on your campus and what
you’re already purchasing, which we’ve created the Food Service Overview and Purchasing Baseline
toolkits to help you do. If you’ve discussed the questions in both those toolkits with people from your
current food service provider, you’ll have an idea of what the current food service provider has and
hasn’t been able to do in terms of ordering local and sustainably produced food— now you’re ready
to really start looking for new producers and distributors that could help improve things.
After your campus has shifted procurement, it will be useful to track the changes and impacts on the
local economy and environment. The Purchasing Baseline Assessment will be a useful tool to show
where your campus is making changes.
Applied Student Research: Figuring out what supply chain opportunities are out there, and which
ones are worth following, can really take as long as you have the energy to go. If you and your
stakeholders see an opportunity that you don’t have time to investigate, or if you’re just not sure
where to start, getting a team of students working on it could be a great next step.
For example, human nutrition students put together a wealth of resources and ideas to promote
more local food in the menus on St. FX campus. Look at their research here. Similarly, UBC student
researchers looked into how to relocalize their food system.

8. Supply Chain Assessment Toolkit 8
Conclusion
This toolkit is a starting place to help you find the sources and make the connections to increase
local, sustainable and just food procurement for your campus dining halls. This is truly about
building relationships and asking those in your food system to figure out how they can contribute to
more local and sustainable foods on campus. Local food is something to celebrate, so find ways to
make this process fun for everyone as possible!