The University is committed to delivering an exciting choice of tasty, convenient, nutritional and sustainable food at a range of prices to enhance the student, staff and visitor experience. This policy covers all food outlets and food served on the University campus.

We follow five key principles:

1. Choice: Ensure a range of university-operated, national brands, local businesses, and temporary food and drink offers to meet the range of cultural, dietary, and lifestyle needs of our students, staff, and visitors.
2. Safe: Ensuring that University food operations produce and supply food to the highest safety standards including for customers with allergies and intolerances. To ensure that all operators on campus have a minimum 4-star environmental health rating.
3. Price Range: Ensure that the range of choices for students and staff meets their varied budgets and in particular, that affordable choice is available.
4. Supply Chain: The University will engage with tenants and food suppliers on campus to improve the sustainability of their product offer. Internally, sustainability standards are embedded in tenders and contracts to drive improvements within the University’s supply chain.
5. Engagement: Educating our university community to understand how food and the choices they make have in creating healthy and sustainable lifestyles. This will be supported by engaging with relevant internal and external stakeholders to stay abreast of best practice in food sustainability.

To support continuous improvement in each of these five principles, we will in the 2024/25 academic year implement the following actions:

1. Choice

• Highlight under 600 calorie options on menus
• Increase gluten free options to 30% across retail menus
• Increase non-meat options to 50% across retail menus

2. Safe

• Introduce searchable online allergy information for all menus.

3. Price Range

• Conduct regular price reviews with Pelican procurement to ensure value for money
• Review range of ‘cheap eats’ products and availability across campus of lower cost food and drink.

4. Supply Chain

• Remove single use plastic from milk supply across campus using FreshKeg system
• Reduce single use plastic from front of house service, including cling film
• Introduce reusable takeaway containers in retail outlets
• Review external catering contractors used by Hospitality.
• Implement a policy to purchase products that only contain sustainably sourced palm oil wherever possible.

5. Engagement

• Carbon impact of menu items to be indicated.
• Include access to information on calorie, macro-nutrient and ingredient information across all menus
• Gain SRA accreditation for sustainability across all University Retail outlets.
• Produce an Annual Report to update our stakeholders on progress against each of the five key principles.

• Prioritised plant-based and vegetarian diets on hospitality menu.
• All eggs are free-range
• Where possible, all meat should be Farm Assured and locally sourced.
• No fish to be served from the MSC fish to avoid list
• Reduced the impact of food waste by utilising the “too good to go” platform
• Collaborate with University initiatives around food sustainability and affordability such as “ecoeats”, supper clubs, and college food events
• Prioritised the sourcing of ingredients within 30 miles to reduce the carbon footprint associated with transportation
• Promoted seasonal menus for conferences and hospitality to further reduce the environmental impact of food production and transportation
• Charge 20p for a disposable coffee cup to encourage reusable coffee cup use
• All disposable coffee cups UK manufactured and biodegradable in 90 days
• Reusable polycarbonate cups used in the bars on a deposit basis, replacing single-use plastic cups
• Achieve “Allergen Accreditation” across all University-operated food outlets and internal hospitality and conference
• Ensure staff are trained to handle special dietary requests with care and attention
• Clear labelling of all allergens and ingredients in line with specific regulations e.g. Natasha's Law
• Independently audit allergen procedures across campus every two years
• All University outlets to have a minimum food safety level 4. Anything below is investigated and action plan in place to improve and re-test
• Increased weighting of sustainable and ethical practice measures on all future food tenders from 10% to 15%
• Worked with Pelican procurement in the pursuit of net positive supply chain, regularly reviewing contracted KPI’s Removed nuts and nut products from Conferences and Hospitality (still serve may contains)

The Food & Dining Team at Lancaster University is committed to delivering an exciting variety of food to enhance the student, staff, and visitor experience. We aim to produce nutritionally balanced, tasty, sustainable, and affordable food for the University community, making healthy eating easier.

We focus on producing seasonal menus for catered accommodation, conferencing, and events using fresh and locally sourced produce.

We aim to purchase our fresh ingredients from local suppliers to make the most of the best produce Lancashire and the Northwest region have to offer, following the customer’s desire for information about the provenance of their food and the growing trend for plant-based menus. To achieve these aims the University will adopt the following principles:

• Understand the environmental and social impact of different food types and sources and make informed decisions in food selection based on this information.
• Support local production by purchasing from and offering menus based around local, or where appropriate, regional food suppliers and growers.
• Providing healthy and more sustainable food choices through the use of seasonal produce and minimising high energy and high carbon footprint ingredients.
• Providing menus for all dietary and most cultural needs.
• Providing foods from certified accredited sources with high welfare, sustainability and ethical standards and avoiding GM ingredients.
• Using resources, including water and utilities, as efficiently as possible in our food production and distribution and limit generation of non-food waste, through selection of reusable equipment, minimising packaging and reducing plastic use.
• Minimise wastage of food through careful planning and order control, applying the waste hierarchy to its disposal.
• Comply with all relevant food hygiene, environmental and other legal requirements, to which the University subscribes, including our UK Allergy Accreditation.
• Monitor the implementation of our Sustainable Food Policy through our ISO 14001 Environmental management System and report against relevant targets.
• Communicate our commitment to sustainable food through the publicity of our food sustainability initiatives and raise awareness of the benefits of our activities to the environment and society.
• Engage with our external food trade organisations, suppliers and HE/FE sector colleagues to identify and share best practice in food sustainability.