Aramark announced how it addresses food insecurity from several angles, including effective operational and food management practices, minimizing surplus food waste, building strategic partnerships, leading food recovery efforts and providing meal plan scholarships.
Assisting college and university students facing food insecurity, Aramark Collegiate Hospitality is collaborating with Swipe Out Hunger, which offers an opportunity to donate meal “swipes” to students at participating locations. In addition, Aramark Collegiate Hospitality funds Swipe Out Hunger’s research and development efforts to explore future solutions.
Aramark Collegiate Hospitality also advocates for legislative and regulatory changes, resources and other efforts including the elimination of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirement for students. Currently, nine Aramark-managed college and university campuses across the U.S. are authorized as SNAP EBT retailers, allowing students to use their EBT funds in Aramark-managed convenience stores on campus.
As part of the company’s commitment to reducing food waste, Aramark engages with the Food Recovery Network to support student-run chapters that minimize food waste by recovering excess produce from local farms and prepared foods from its operations. Aramark also works with Food Donation Connection to donate unused, unserved food across Aramark locations to qualified nonprofit organizations. This effort reduces food waste going to landfills and delivers food to nonprofits who serve people in need.
In addition, Aramark Collegiate Hospitality provides onsite operators with simple and effective solutions, including an Aramark Addressing Food Insecurity Toolkit, which enables surplus food donations, meal plan donation programs and on-campus food pantry support.
To date, more than 160 Aramark Collegiate Hospitality locations offer at least one program to address food insecurity on campus; 78% of those locations offer more than one solution. More than 69,000 meal swipes have been donated – and almost 194,000 pounds of food has been donated between surplus food and food pantry donations. Aramark Collegiate Hospitality supports 118 on-campus food pantries, 57 on-campus gardens and 32 on-campus farmers’ markets.
In addition, Aramark developed a nutrition education curriculum as part of Healthy For Life, an initiative with the American Heart Association. The curriculum is part of the SNAP-Ed Toolkit, which helps agencies across the country find evidence-based interventions and help households make healthy eating and physical activity choices on a limited budget.
Aramark also creates opportunities for employees to support their local communities through Aramark Building Community, the global volunteer program, including food drives and programs that empower, educate and inspire people in the community to lead healthier lives.
