Stanford Dining and Stanford Hospitality & Auxiliaries serve over 25,000 meals every day and our globally inspired menus reflect and celebrate the diversity of cultures, identities, and food preferences that make the Stanford community special. We believe that food can be a great teacher and strive to introduce our students to new foods and food experiences that augment their education and expand their worldview. In partnership with Residential Education, we integrate a number of culturally inspired food concepts and culinary celebrations into the residential experience including:

R&DE Stanford Dining understands the unique challenges that students with food allergies experience when trying to navigate their dietary needs on campus. More than 15 years ago, R&DE Stanford Dining was the first university dining program in the nation to designate a dining hall as “nut free” and we continue to lead by example, partnering with FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education), Stanford’s Office of Accessible Education (OAE), and student advocates to help improve the college experience for students with food allergies through enhanced awareness, accommodations and training. Since launching the Food Allergies @ Stanford program in 2017, our dedicated Food Allergy Program Nutritionist has supported thousands of Stanford students, staff and guests with food allergies and special dietary needs. Our staff works collaboratively with the Office of Accessible Education to accommodate students in the dining halls with a range of disabilities including mobility and access challenges, medical conditions, vision/hearing impairments, and eating disorders.

R&DE Stanford Dining uses our dining program as a platform to recognize a diversity of chefs who influence and educate our culinary team and students. Together we are creating critically important food experiences and educational opportunities in support of Stanford's ethnic theme houses. Stanford Dining’s pioneering culinary initiatives integrate an inclusive recruitment model with ethical sourcing and collaborative menus, bringing in accomplished women chefs and women chefs of color—including Tanya Holland, Mai Pham, and Iliana de la Vega—to consult and speak about their experiences.

Stanford Dining DEIB Affiliate Committee members: Tami Lin (co-chair), Daniel Archer (co-chair), Giselle Clements, Kenia Balderama, Rachelle Rivers, Calvin Membrano, Lee Levig, Sonja Spenser, Chad Yamate, Madeline Bissel.

Stanford Dining DEIB Affiliate Committee

The Stanford Dining DEIB Affiliate Committee was created to ensure that all members of the Stanford Dining community feel they belong, they are supported, and they have broad access to all the opportunities and benefits in Stanford Dining. The committee reports directly to the Assistant Vice Provost for Stanford Dining, Hospitality and Auxiliaries and is charged, among other things, with:

• Assisting in the development of a Stanford Dining DEIB strategic plan, in alignment with the R&DE vision, mission, mantra, core values and DEIB priorities.
• Helping to establish new DEIB functions, policies and procedures for Stanford Dining, with a focus on designing, building and maintaining a program of inclusivity and equity for our staff community
• Collaborating with staff of all cultures, races, abilities, skill sets, and backgrounds to address friction points and promote a community where everyone feels included and empowered
• Working with the Training and Development team help to create DEIB curriculum for training, workshops, huddles, and professional development opportunities for all layers of the organization, including professional staff, student staff, and bargained unit staff
• Collaborating with other R&DE DEIB committees, Stanford Dining leadership, R&DE HR and using materials from IDEAL and other DEIB resources.

Ethical Sourcing & Supporting Black Businesses

R&DE Stanford Dining leverages its institutional purchasing power to help reverse the disappearance of Black farms. 98% of Black agricultural landowners have been dispossessed since the 1950s. Today, less than one percent of all farmland is owned by Black farmers.

Stanford Dining is committed to helping Black farmers overcome historical barriers--such as systemic racism in lending and access to land and capital--as well as the related inequities caused by these barriers, such as insufficient access to traditional markets and distribution channels. Our vision is to share the purchasing model we develop and disseminate tool kits widely among both Black farmers and college and university foodservice leaders, so that the model can be scaled across the campus dining sector. Our hope is that every volume foodservice purchasing department will think of equitable supply chains in the same way they think about local purchasing: the norm, just as it is to buy local. Long term, the idea is to expand the purchasing model to support Black businesses more broadly, and ultimately increase supply chain diversity across other important underrepresented groups.

The Racial Equity Working group is part of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative (MCURC), co-founded and co-led by R&DE. The working group will help the MCURC take concrete steps as an allied organization in opposition to institutional racism and as a vehicle of antiracist programs and policies. The working group will help design and implement steps--using the draft MCURC Racial Equity Action Plan as a starting point--to ensure that the programs and policies of the Collaborative contribute to racial equity. The plan includes both inward and outward-facing action.

• Inward gaze: Identify ways in which the programs and policies of the MCURC, as an institutional collaborative, can contribute to racial equity. This may include:
  • Advise on implementation and evaluation of progress toward stated priorities.
  • Support MCURC leadership in ongoing prioritization of action steps (i.e., based on the scale and urgency of the relevant problem(s) a given step can address).
  • Identify changes to the MCURC’s organizational structure, membership criteria, etc. (e.g,. collaborating with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Black farmers, NAACP, Black-owned businesses) in order to reduce racial disparities in terms of which individuals and institutions have access to the Collaborative, to make improvements in the lives of communities of color, and the many benefits that participation confers.
  • Identify changes to its criteria and roster of member institutions in order to reduce racial disparities in terms of which institutions have access to the Collaborative and the many benefits that participation confers.

• Outward gaze: Identify ways in which the programs and policies of the MCURC--as a result of its core areas of impact: research, education, and innovation in support of Menus of Change Principles--can contribute to racial equity.
  • Advise on implementation and evaluation of progress toward stated priorities in the draft MCURC Racial Equity Action Plan.
  • Support MCURC leadership in ongoing prioritization of potential action steps (i.e., based on the scale and urgency of the relevant problem(s) a given step can address).
  • Identify research questions, academic disciplines, and individual researchers to bring a racial equity lens to the existing and future research agenda (including identifying intersections with the three current focus areas of plant-forward diets, food waste reduction, and drivers of consumer food choices).
  • Identify curricular and co-curricular programs the MCURC can offer and/or help its members offer that ensure equitable access to education about healthy, sustainable food choices.