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The nonprofit food4VOLS at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, benefits from a refresh of its main prep room, truck and more as the winner of the FE&S Kitchen Storage Makeover contest.
One relatable college experience that seems to carry on through generations is survival by way of instant noodles. A not-to-be-missed life experience? Perhaps, but Tyler White, director of the University of Tennessee’s Culinary Institute and assistant professor in UT’s Retail, Hospitality and Tourism Management program, contends that does not have to be the norm. “Often our alumni groups make light of the fact that they survived on ramen in college and deem it a rite of passage,” he says. “Yes, that is one way to think of it, but also, you were food insecure: You didn’t have money or access to food. Sometimes it’s about not knowing what food insecurity is. Students don’t have to struggle on campus. Food insecurity on our campus is a solvable problem with resources that already exist here. We have everything here for students to thrive.”
University of Tennessee student volunteers handle all meal assembly. Photos by Grant KesslerPhotos by Grant KesslerTyler White knows full well the amount of overproduction of food that occurs on the UT campus, which he points out is a natural part of operations in the collegiate dining segment. He started providing the UT community with prepackaged, ready-to-heat-and-eat meals during COVID-19 and realized he could continue to create those meals from the overproduction that results from prepping for high-volume service each day.
The food4VOLS program evolved from that experience. A conversation between Tyler White and Jay Price, who serves as the sustainability manager for the University of Tennessee, moved the idea from conception to reality. The food recovery program now addresses food insecurity issues on both the UT campus and in the surrounding community. Operating as a nonprofit outside of the university’s oversight, the program intertwines with campus dining. Donors and ongoing fundraising efforts support the bulk of its operating budget. The university donates the space to run the program and funds one full-time employee, Andrew White (Tyler’s father), who serves as the coordinator of food4VOLS.
While Tyler White had the necessary physical space inside the UT Culinary Institute building on the outskirts of campus, he did not have the exact setup he wanted. “I did not need a brand-new kitchen, but I did need a new arrangement that would maximize efficiency and accommodate the many volunteers that make the program viable,” he says. “The overall lack of storage and shelving made execution challenging.”
These problems were solved when food4VOLS won the FE&S Kitchen Storage Makeover. The makeover team swooped in to assess the space, determine the best solutions to improve organization of the space, and handle all install needs for the shelving and storage solutions provided. Ultimately, food4VOLS received a transformation of its primary production area, truck used for food collection, walk-in cooler and freezer, and dish wash area storage.
Pain Points
First, the team needed to identify what areas needed improvement. “The first phase of the makeover started with a discussion about our pain points,” says Tyler White. “It was less about specific pieces we wanted and more about our problems.”
The main problem was not having the right quantity and type of prep tables in the main production room. Another fundamental problem was not having adequate shelving in the primary truck used to pick up donations across campus to deliver packaged meals. The truck setup was cobbled together with odds and ends Tyler and Andrew White had accumulated. For example, the extremely practical duo initially purchased racks to hold the food from a chain retailer going out of business. “The items we had were never meant for what we were doing: transporting food,” says Tyler White.
Fast-forward to the transformation: The install team reconfigured the truck and built it out with food-grade materials designed for transporting food. “What we have now is easy to clean, doesn’t tip over in the truck, and makes every part of the collection and distribution of food much easier,” says Andrew White, who starts every day in that truck collecting food from various locations on campus.
The collection process involves recovering food from five primary facilities daily (some twice a day): Rocky Top Dining Hall (the largest student dining hall), Stokely Dining Hall (another student dining hall), Anderson Training Center (caters to student-athletes), plus a catering kitchen and bakery facility on campus. “In a perfect world, there would be no extra food,” says Andrew White, “but you always have to ensure there is something for the students. There will always be some overproduction; it’s built into operations.” Aramark handles foodservices for Vol Dining, and the food management company in turn supports the partnership between Vol Dining and food4VOLS.
Time management is Andrew White’s biggest issue. His daily work routine starts at 7:30 a.m.; his first stop is often the student-athlete dining hall, Anderson Training Center, or ATC, to pick up donations from dinner the night before. He returns there later in the afternoon to pick up more food after lunch. ATC, along with Rocky Top, are large contributors to the food recovery program and require two daily pickups as a result. Rocky Top alone feeds 8,000 students daily, he says. ATC functions separately in terms of per-person plating guidelines for students, which lends to overproduction at times.
Many factors contribute to the overproduction of food, Andrew White explains: “There are very specific rules on reusing foods, and some facilities lack enough storage to keep the items. Each location must decide what they can keep. Most seek to keep proteins, such as steak that could be cut up and used in a stir-fry the next day.” He adds that dining halls also follow a set meal schedule, which can contribute to not holding ingredients for the next day, since those items may not match the need for the next day’s menu.
Andrew White continually reminds dining team members of the program as he winds his way through the different dining halls picking up food. Each location has a designated spot for food4VOLS items, which are stored in plastic pans in walk-in coolers. Empty containers are restocked as new items are collected. One of the challenges is the continual education necessary for staff. “Some dining halls are busier than others, which means staff have other issues they are dealing with,” he says. “It takes constant communication to reinforce the importance of saving and storing overproduction of food.”
The food4VOLS team reinforces that message every semester, says Andrew White, when there tends to be turnover in staff.
Once back at the UT Culinary Institute building, which houses the food4VOLS program, staff weigh and categorize all food donations by protein, starch, vegetable/produce and dessert. An average day brings in roughly 650 pounds of food. The program diverted a total of 160,000 pounds of food from going into compost in 2023; those items created more than 60,000 meals for students. This year, food4VOLS estimates the program will collect 200,000 pounds of food, which will result in 65,000 student meals.
Also, in 2023, food4VOLS donated 100,000 pounds of food to neighboring counties. In addition to assembling meals for students, the program also donates bulk food, primarily through a partnership with with Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee, whose partners also collect and distribute bulk food items. “We collect so much food, and we make only the number of meals we can give away,” says Tyler White. “Branching out with larger donations works to keep the food out of the compost bin while helping the community.”
The FE&S Kitchen Storage Makeover team reconfigured the food4VOLS truck and replaced prior components with food-grade materials designed for transporting food.
Meal Assembly and Distribution
Roughly 350 meals a day from collected and repurposed food are distributed to food4VOLS cupboards around campus the same day. The meals are stored in refrigerators in locations easily accessible to students. Locations include a microwave and utensils.
The process of going from recovered food to prepackaged meals starts with assessing intake for the morning and creating a menu. Since the items collected change each day are not known until that morning, Andrew White creates each menu on the fly.
Student volunteers arrive midmorning for meal assembly. Because certain majors at the university require volunteer hours, Andrew White says he has never had an issue with labor. The volunteers portion the items into individual meals in plastic containers. “Compostable containers are cost-prohibitive,” he notes, “but we continue to look into that.”
The newly improved production room enables more volunteers to work at the same time, says Tyler White. “It’s spaced out now so we can make meals for campus and pack for the community all at once,” he says. “In the past, we had one production line making meals, then after that did community packing. The functionality now allows us to produce even more.”
The program continues to gain traction among students despite little marketing to build awareness. “We have been very careful about turning the faucet all the way on while we fine-tune things,” says Tyler White. “We now have the infrastructure in place and can start ramping things up.” He intends to nearly double the number of meals available daily by next fall, going from 350 per day to 600.
Additional shelving and storage solutions created a more functional dish room.
Program Expansion
From its inception, Tyler White envisioned the food4VOLS program as a transferable model for other college campuses. That goal is about to become reality through emerging partnerships with Montana State University and South Carolina State University, both of which are currently creating programs that emulate the food4VOLS model (an alternative name is being considered to avoid the UT nickname “the Vols” on another campus).
Further boosting the profile of the program, in August, food4VOLS received the Tennessee Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award in recognition of the program’s success. Additionally, the program was awarded two grants in 2023 that totaled $790,000 for fighting food insecurity on campus.
“Every year we are evolving one step more from the previous year,” says Tyler White. The next goal is adding a summer program in 2025 at least once a week to address K-12 family needs. “It’s a building block,” he says. “The program is blossoming and we know now we can get to the next level.”
Since the makeover of the space, the Food4VOLS leaders believe they now have the infrastructure in place to ramp up meal production.
3 Makeover Highlights
With a $75,000 budget to transform the Food4VOLS space, the makeover team was able to enhance many different areas of the space, including adding shelving to eliminate wet nesting in the dish room and doubled the amount of storage available in the dry storage room. Here are three of the areas where the makeover had the biggest impact:
Production room. Every item in this room was replaced. The makeover team removed old tables and storage bins and installed new, all stainless-steel food-grade workstations and accessories. The upgraded work area and additional workstations now enable the Food4VOLS team the space necessary to reach its goal of nearly doubling its output of meals this academic year. “We can now have four volunteers working at one station and passing items through to each other instead of two in a line,” says Andrew White.
Food pickup and distribution truck. A new, more functional cart system replaced the non-food grade carts formerly used to collect food and distribute meals around campus. “The racks maneuver easily in the tight corners in the truck,” Andrew White says. “And they are very light, so that makes the job much easier.” A worktable, basket storage and security cage with sliding door add to the efficiency of the truck space.
Walk-in cooler. Removed the floor track system and replaced it with a track system that holds double the number of pans in the same space. “Staff can now easily maneuver in and out,” Tyler White says.
Andrew White, Food4VOLS coordinator, says the new equipment and configuration in the truck makes transporting food much easier. An average of 650 pounds of food are collected each day from locations around campus. Roughly 350 heat-and-eat meals are distributed daily.
Quick Take: Tyler White’s Road to Food Recovery at UT
Tyler WhiteQ: You have been instrumental in steering the culinary ship at UT. How did your journey begin?
A: I started at the University of Tennessee in 2010. I was brought on to teach culinary arts at UT for Pellissippi State Community College, specifically the lab component for an associate degree. They outsourced the lab component to UT; the lecture portion happened at the community college. Eventually, Pellissippi State brought the lab piece in-house. The question then was what direction should UT go in? That was the genesis that created UT’s culinary arts minor.
At that point, we started to explore what else we could do with the space that was available and our time. I met with the office of sustainability and realized quickly how much food was being composted. The people collecting food often wondered why it was being composted — it was not difficult to see when you opened the bins there was nothing wrong with the food. I knew I could create something to help with that problem.
Q: How do you balance Food4VOLS with teaching?
A: My primary job continues to be teaching. I teach two classes in the fall and three in the spring; unlike other faculty at UT, I don’t do research. Instead, outside of classroom time, I support catering on campus and Food4VOLS. This spring, I will teach a zero-waste class dedicated to utilizing the food Andrew collects and teaching students how to prepare it differently. For example, if a lot of green beans are collected, we will talk about the components of a casserole, and green beans will be a mandatory ingredient.
Q: What role did AmeriCorps play in the early stages of creating Food4VOLS?
A: AmeriCorps has a strong presence on the UT campus. Right now, they are doing a river project and many other things. I became aware that was a resource for us. We spent a year devising the plan with the help of a volunteer from AmeriCorps in the VISTA program [volunteers commit to one year of service]. The volunteer was instrumental in researching on the back end and fundraising.
Q: Food insecurity on campuses has certainly become more front and center in recent years. How did programs at other universities influence Food4VOLS?
A: We actually could not find another program quite to the extent of what we were planning. We asked a lot of colleges what they were doing and how they handled it. There are other programs that exist, particularly with food management companies, we just never found anything that impacted students in the way we wanted, so we set out to create our own.
Q: You have a vision to share the Food4VOLS model. How is that effort moving forward?
A: We are expanding to two new schools, Montana State University and University of South Carolina. South Carolina already has the infrastructure in place because they offer a culinary program, and they will execute it with a food management and recovery course as part of their curriculum. Meals will be created in a lab piece. They are going to integrate it into an academic setting for proof of concept, then grow it from there for their campus.