Harvard’s dining services donates food for distribution
Before the current pandemic crisis, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) prepared almost 23,000 meals on a typical day. When Harvard’s campus began de-densifying earlier this spring, HUDS was left with a significant amount of food on hand. Over the ensuing weeks, it was placed in freezers or re-deployed to open operations to feed the nearly 450 graduate and undergraduate students who remained on campus. Increasingly, HUDS has been offering pre-prepared foods to further allow for reduced staffing and social distancing, leaving on-hand ingredients unused. As part of its ongoing effort to reduce food waste, the HUDS team began to assemble the stockpiles of loaves of breads and baked goods, rice, beans, grains, pastas, cereals, peanut and seed butters, dried fruits and nuts, sliced deli meats and cheeses, dairy products, dry goods like flour, corn meal, oats and sugar, and even condiments. HUDS has since emptied several freezers and storerooms of items that could be re-deployed locally in Cambridge’s nonprofit grocery program, Food for Free. “Food for Free, our regular food donation partner,...