“Smell that!” says Victoria Wakefield, Purchasing Manager for Student Housing and Hospitality Services (which includes UBC Food Services). “Isn’t that delectable? So much flavour. It’s their chai.”

She’s holding open a box of organic, fair trade tea from Zhena’s Gypsy Tea. Food Services began providing this tea in all 17 of its food and catering units in January, and it will be front and centre at The Loop Café, the new food outlet set to open in September in the new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS).

CIRS has been designed to be the greenest, most innovative and high-performance building in North America, a living laboratory for cutting-edge research and sustainable practices, products, systems and policies. This poses some challenges for the food outlet, which aims to be energy neutral, or as close as possible.

For a start, there will be no bottled beverages, so instead they are creating some tempting alternatives, including Italian sodas, fresh-brewed iced teas and infused water.

“We’re not even having carton milk!” adds Loriann McGowan, Director of Food Services, who has been leading the CIRS café project in vision, development and design. “We decided early on that we wouldn’t cook on site, as there is no gas supply in the building, and we operate a full production centre only a block away. Entrees and menu components will be prepared at the production centre kitchen and delivered fresh daily. There is water and electricity, and we will be metering usage, which we don’t do elsewhere. This café will serve as a benchmark for Food Services to measure the amount of electricity and water that a café uses, to help us set standards at our other units.”

That includes restricting themselves to a single, centralized cooler with a series of well-insulated doors. And pursuing some creative, non-traditional options, such as investigating the use of large cubes of ice in the iced tea and soda containers, rather than running separate cooling elements for hours on end.

The Loop's menu items will be dominated by local, seasonal products. “We have a protocol for our purchasing and menu decisions,” explains McGowan. “We will use whatever the UBC Farm has available for purchase, then we will source within 150 miles of campus. After that, we will support Canadian farmers before moving outside of Canada. But that is complex as well —is an Ontario product, for instance, really a better choice than one from Washington State if you are measuring food miles?”

Sam Wellman—Manager, Retail Units, and the person charged with the day-to-day running of the new outlet—is developing the detailed menu options. She expects to offer seasonal menus—spring, summer and fall/winter—with salads, hot items, daily soups and stews and desserts.

“We will have traditional weekly specials,” Wellman says, “like pasta, udon noodles or tacos. And we may offer a bread bowl for the soups and stews instead of paper. Either you eat it, and there is no waste at all, or else you put it into the compost.”

Guests will be able to customize the salads, though some items available elsewhere will not be on the menu. “There will be kiwi fruits, but no mangoes or coconuts—if we are counting food miles, they’re just not sustainable.”

That said, you can expect to see a lot of Food Services’ signature items, such as cinnamon buns, Ponderosa cake, granola bars, muffins and scones. Plus, a fair trade donut from Ethical Bean Coffee that has already been beta-tested in Place Vanier residence.

CIRS is meant to be a place of learning and research, and this philosophy will extend to The Loop Café. Food Services will have access to one of the digital displays in the foyer, where they will tell the stories of suppliers like the tea company or a farm in Chilliwack that provides rhubarb.

Food Services will also be working with graduate students on projects such as calculating the food miles of menu items, the debate over paper versus china, energy and water consumption and other topics that will help UBC plan future food outlets and improve menu items.

There will also be opportunities for community outreach. Food Services will be inviting partners such as local suppliers, the UBC Farm and the University Neighbourhood Association to give talks and connect with students and other diners. They will also feature weekly products and have recipes from local vendors—some of whose products, such as honey, will be for sale in a retail outlet attached to the café.

“Seasonal food is great for that,” says Wakefield. “It connects the community so that they’re closer to their food; where it’s grown, what it looks like, what you can do with it.”

So will the food be more expensive than the fare at other UBC outlets? “Stay tuned!” replies McGowan. “Local and organic options do tend to be more expensive to purchase. But there are ways to mitigate that. And part of the educational aspect is encouraging smaller portions, emphasising high quality, nutritious food, whole grains, that sort of thing. You can still eat a balanced meal that isn’t supersized.”

“It’s been a learning process, not just for us but for our suppliers too,” says Wellman. “Even in the tendering process, we’ve been asking everyone, ‘What’s the best, the greenest, the latest and greatest?’”

Food Services bought $1 million worth of locally processed or grown produce in 2010, says Wakefield, and will be above that number when they tally up the total for 2011. That buying power allows them to put pressure on suppliers to improve their practices. They have been encouraging coffee roaster Ethical Bean, for instance, to deliver their beans in reusable containers.

“And don’t forget, we also have to be fiscally sustainable,” says McGowan. “It’s a great learning lesson for Food Services, with repercussions for our 17 other outlets. With every proposed item, we’ve been asking, what is the return on investment?”

“How do you do a food outlet in a net neutral building?” asks Wakefield. “And be profitable, too? That’s the question we’ve been working on for more than a year now, and we’re just beginning to find some answers. This is just the beginning of the journey. Where we start is nowhere near where we’re going to end.”

The Loop Café at the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), 2260 West Mall, will open to the public on Tuesday, September 6, 2011.

Appeared in the Campus & Community eNewsletter, July 2011