To combat food insecurity on campus, UFV and Dana Hospitality have partnered to launch the Food for All program, which offers prepared freezer meals for purchase in the Abbotsford cafeteria (B103) for $5.25 before tax. The meals are kept in a specified freezer with a Food for All decal, and they can be purchased at the till or at Triple O’s after hours.
Kyle Baillie, Executive Director of Student Affairs, said the menu will feature “a number of healthy, hearty, fall-type meals. Curries, stews, pasta (lasagna, spaghetti, etc.), and Rodney Robert (Operations Manager from Dana) is always working on new recipes, so you can expect that the offering will rotate.” Vegan and vegetarian options are also available, and they’re clearly marked.
According to Baillie, the goal of the program is to “provide a healthy, convenient, and affordable food option” where “anyone is welcome to purchase meals to take home.”
Currently, the Abbotsford campus is the only location with a Food for All freezer and will serve as a pilot to monitor sustainability before the project looks to expand. The freezer meals will be available on campus indefinitely.
“Ultimately, the longevity of the project will depend on uptake and committed people trying to make a difference,” Baillie said.
Baillie explained that the “Food for All program is just one element of a larger food insecurity program on campus.” He highlighted the UFV/SUS food bank which has been operating since 2019, food insecurity programming delivered by Lalem te Baker (formerly Baker House student housing), and the Peer Resource and Leadership Centre’s recent launch of a student recipe series on TikTok.
UFV identified the need for a Food for All program on campus after conducting a food insecurity study in Winter 2019. They also took into account data collected by the Community Health and Social Innovation Hub (CHASI) last summer examining the causes, prevalence, and impacts of food insecurity at UFV.
Regarding how the partnership between UFV and Dana Hospitality works, Robert said: “As far as the equipment goes, UFV was kind enough to purchase the freezer … As far as the food product and content goes, packaging, labelling, the time that it takes to produce those items — that’s all coming out of Dana.”
This required careful menu planning to ensure a low cost-point for students and long-term sustainability, which meant the program leaned toward vegetarian and vegan options to ease off costs.
“What I try to do is also be fiscally responsible beyond just providing menu content or portions that [are] going to be suitable for the program. I also want us to be fiscally responsible because … food service has been strongly affected over the last year and a half by COVID-19,” said Robert.
Image: Andrea Sadowski/The Cascade
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
