The Boston area is home to some of the world’s finest educational institutions. Here at Food For Free, we’re honored to partner with many of them to help fight hunger in our communities. Harvard, located right here in Cambridge, is one of our most active university partners, and we couldn’t be more grateful for their support, especially over the past year and a half. For more than seven years, Harvard has been a food rescue partner of ours, helping us save quality, nutritious food from going to waste.
When the pandemic reduced on-campus presence, food production was also more limited, and therefore there was less opportunity for food rescue. Harvard stepped up by packaging meals in-house, using surplus food from their dining halls, and working with Food For Free to distribute these meals through local schools and other community partners.
To learn more about Harvard and its commitment to fighting hunger, we spoke to Smitha Haneef, Managing Director for Harvard University Dining Services.
Q. Why is the issue of hunger something Harvard is committed to?
Health and wellbeing is at the forefront of a community, and we are committed to the wellbeing of our entire community, not just on campus but the broader Greater Boston. We are very fortunate to have amazing resources and expertise – academic expertise, yes, but more especially food expertise. Our team is creating delicious and nutritious food, using the highest quality ingredients, employing the highest standard for food safety. We have the ability to share that expertise and those resources, and improve the wellbeing of our broader community.
Q. What is Harvard’s approach to reducing food waste on campus and why is it so important to the University?
Reducing food waste – diverting safe, consumable food from compost – is our first priority. So first, we respect the food itself. I come from a culture where every grain of rice is valuable. So we start with that lens. Next, we carefully manage production to reduce opportunities for food to be wasted. We have great systems for that. Our next job is to keep every ounce of food out of the landfill. We work hard to educate our community, through our Food Literacy Project about the fact that food waste is a major contributor to climate change, and that we as practitioners must bring solutions. Which brings us to donation; we gather what’s left from meal services and then partner with Food for Free to make sure that nutritious and vital resource reaches people who need it.
Q. How do you involve the Harvard University community in your food rescue efforts?
Our team members are very proud participants in our collection of donatable food. It is meaningful to them to gather up this food that they lovingly cooked to ensure it reaches people in need. But we also invite our students and staff to participate in what we call Family Meals preparation. In some locations, we gather any donatable food into single-serve meals with the help of volunteers. Picture a small assembly line of volunteers taking the food from the end of lunch and portioning it into beautiful meals with dignity, such as a single meal of brown rice, bulgogi beef and roasted broccoli.
Q. Many people aren’t aware that many college students are food insecure. Can you tell us a bit more about this challenge?
Harvard has a unique program for undergraduates: their admittance to Harvard is need-blind, and only after they accept admission do they then work with the College to determine what, if anything, they can pay towards their academic and living expenses. That’s also the reason that Harvard has a mandatory and unlimited meal plan, so that undergrads can all participate equally in the dining experience, where community is really established. But we are always working on how to create more inclusive foods that meet the needs of a more diverse campus.
That said, not all colleges have this kind of opportunity, and given that health and well-being are so central to every individual’s ability to thrive, we believe it’s really important to share what we’ve learned in working with Food for Free with peers across the food system—at hospitals, businesses, and across the education sector. Our hope is that others can create similar programs in their communities and for the benefit of their students.
Q. How do you measure the impact of your work?
We keep track of donations as pounds and as meal counts, but that’s just a measurement. Impact for us comes in seeing how this food is shared in our community, and in seeing and hearing from colleagues who have also adopted this model to reduce wasted food on their campuses.
When it comes to supporting hunger relief, what challenges did you face during the pandemic and how were you able to overcome them?
We had a significantly reduced on-campus presence during the pandemic, so also significantly reduced food production. We were also largely preparing and serving food in single-serve, takeaway plates. So we just pivoted and began to create “Family Meal”-style donations from any open location. (“Family Meal” references the name of Food For Free’s packaged meals program.) This filled a gap at Food for Free, we hope, while you so nimbly turned your attention to the broader challenge of feeding children and families who suddenly found themselves at home without the support of other hunger relief programs, including the school lunch program.
Q. Where do you see opportunities for colleges/universities and local non-profit organizations to increase their impact together?
It is important for us to think about wasted food at the source level, and to develop more solutions focused on making use of every edible resource, whether through gleaning or other farm-level efforts. We have to work collectively in that arena.
We also need to share our knowledge and experience broadly. Every community in the country endures the reality of food insecurity. We’ve developed a really workable model for donating food here at Harvard and are thrilled to share it with others. Each foodservice operation is different, so our colleagues and peers make adjustments, but the trend of donating food is growing. Further collaborations like ours make me hopeful.
Smitha Haneef, Managing Director for Harvard University Dining Services, joined Harvard in April 2021. At Harvard, Haneef oversees hospitality and dining for Harvard College’s residential living and learning experience, as well as University professional schools and campus catering. Harvard University Dining Services serves almost 5 million meals annually through more than 30 different campus operations. Prior to joining Harvard, Haneef served as Assistant Vice President for University Services at Princeton University; and helped launch the LifeWorks Restaurant Group of Aramark, with operations at multiple Fortune 500 companies. Haneef was also chef and owner of Aha Bite Corporation, an award-wining restaurant and catering company in Alabama. Haneef began her career at five-star hotels and restaurants in India and has earned degrees from Osmania University, India’s National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology, the Harvard Graduate School of Education Institute of Education Management, and the Harvard Business School’s General Management Program.
Food For Free is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the Greater Boston community with reliable access to fresh and nutritious food. Food For Free accomplishes its mission through food rescue, partnerships with schools, colleges, and community food programs, and our own direct service programs.
