Kitchen Cabinet
April 16, 2018
Steve Kjellgren, Sarah Mersch, Jen Donkin, Rafael Soriano Campos, Bri Jol, Gwen Saliares, Paul Matzke, Jim Dontje, Alan Meier, Lisa Heldke, Molly Yunkers, Chuck Niederriter, Jessica Braun, Jeri Miller, Kevin Birr
Campus Kitchens at Gustavus? – Rafael Soriano
Looking at using food that may need to be disposed of due to food handling safety & getting it to those who are food insecure. Campus Kitchens is a nationwide business with a site in Mankato with executive – Karen Anderson. Student run kitchen – take food donations, put into a healthy meal & distribute. In Mankato they have a website where people volunteer for specific tasks. We would need to figure out how many resources we have and who/how many we would be sending it to. There are people from Gustavus who volunteer at Campus Kitchens in Mankato.
3 resources needed
Food excess available (Campus, restaurants, etc)
Students able to take on this project & responsibility – Rafael & 2-3 others. Need to organize and create a system to make sustainable
Shared kitchen space on campus or at local church (Trinity Lutheran)
Rafael is looking for support for the project from Kitchen cabinet.
In order to address food waste in St Peter. Last week they counted the amount of food servings composted per week – 400-500 servings/week. 10-12% of population of Nicollet Co is facing starvation & there is an issue we can address.
Question posed – would this fill a need not currently being done in the St Peter community or would this fit with another program in progress? Trinity Lutheran Church offers one meal per week. There is nothing that has this resource available throughout the week. There is a worry about the program not being sustainable in this community and would the logistics be feasible. The other suggestions would be to have the conversation in the community to see where best it would fit and how could it happen and with whom. Campus Kitchens is a franchise that would help in the legal side of this. One system we could envision is the product is collected, cooled and then redistributed. We would need some refrigeration space. Also look for an organization on campus that would team up, or club or class that could link. The meal at Trinity started as a class project and then was carried on by adults in the church. Another suggestion would be talk to the local schools who offer meals to youth during the summer.
Next Step – Rafael will need to get in touch with the groups that have been doing this type of service. There is a group in the St. Peter area that meets quarterly- St Peter News feed – SHIP coordinator for the area and someone from another organization are meeting to create a partnership to address food insecurity.
The Ecstatic Skin Fire & Ice and Dirt Reviewed – Lisa H.
Brief discussion on book chapters.
April 19th Earth Day Preview – All
Will be in the hallway outside Evelyn Young Dining. Tables are reserved. Will set up Thursday starting at 9 am. There will be some activities helping promote the Outdoors Day happening this weekend. Ideal to have some from the Outdoors Day group do some tabling to promote the event.
Outdoors Day in the Arboretum April 22nd – Gwen
The weather may be an issue for the event. They had rain contingency (tent or potentially use space in Nobel & Lund) but not for snow. They may look to postpone to the beginning of May if weather too cold this weekend. Most of the activities would be centered around the concrete area & green open space but could be muddy. The goal of this was to discover the outdoors so being outside would be ideal. One concern there hasn’t been much connection with facilities and campus safety regarding needs – electricity, parking, signage, etc. There was a request to Dining Service for food (solar cooking of smores). If it is mostly cloudy this may not work will consider a fire back up option. Kaitlin Hanson & Jacob Larson are coordinating this project. Shirley & Scott in the Arb are involved in this.
There are a lot of other activities happening that weekend.
Residence Hall Delivery project – Kevin
Group of students (Inactis) that may be able to team up with the Campus Kitchens project.
There is a group of students proposing a delivery service of Market Place food. The students are still working on it. They want to deliver the food and charge the students a delivery fee which would go to a food shelf or some group like that. Biggest obstacle is where to charge this – wouldn’t want it to come from caf account. Their plan would be to have an app for students to order on line & would deliver within a time frame. One suggestion to sell sub sandwiches door to door which may be a more viable option. Still though the problem would be how do they get paid. They were hoping to have a test of it this weekend but was canceled due to the weather. Another suggestion would be a token system that could be purchased in the bookstore to cover the cost of the delivery fee (?pay cash only). One concern would be if this could be charged to a student account. GTS offered to set up a Paypal account where this could be paid for. This would be a good type of service for students, especially those who are feeling sick.
Next Meeting – May 14th Big Hill Farm
Who should attend? – Invite – Facilities, Nobel soil folks, Tom Rooney, the whole cabinet, Admissions staff, Marketing, Big Hill Farm interns,
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