John Aiken

I am currently the Senior Buyer at Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) and have held this position for 7 years. I started at Harvard as a Customer Service Manager at the Quad undergraduate dining halls, and then was promoted to General Manager a year later and held that position for 8 years.

I have been involved with our sustainability program since its beginning. I started by introducing myself to farmers and trying to see what and where our program could help bring their great products to the University without interrupting their base customers (as you can imagine when we order products for 6,700 undergrads and our retail operations we can put quite a stress on their inventories). So we had to start slowly and be somewhat understanding. I attended a few local and sustainable meetings and events to spread the word of our desire to help support our local farmers and small business. We saw that this was going to be a creative challenge and would take some time, but knew it would be worth our efforts. In attending these meetings, we met some folks who were very excited and wanted to start immediately, and some who were leery of Harvard’s interest. So it has been a long road, but after 5 years we have moved thousands of cases of local apples, squashes, pears, honey, cheeses, chicken, seafood and ice cream to name a few⎯and I’m always looking for more!

I enjoy building the relationships with our farmers, chefs, students and distributors. As the process developed, I realized it was very important to learn all that each of us has to go through to be successful. You see the farmer in the January planning for next year's crops, the distributors getting the products to us as fast and fresh as possible, the chefs building and executing new recipes, and the students enjoying them⎯along with a hundred other things it takes in-between. As you better understand each other's needs, you develop a stronger program to enable this to grow for years to come.

As a chef in my past, and growing up not far from a farm as a child, taking advantage of great fresh local products has always been a part of my way of cooking and living. So bringing these passions to HUDS and being part of this movement within our organization is very fulfilling to me personally.

Personally, I have gone tray-less for the past year. It’s something that has been much discussed on college campuses since last year, and I have been doing it ever since. Last spring, Rob Gogan pointed out that if we were able to reduce the food purchased (and sometimes wasted) by 5%, it would have more of a sustainable effect than recycling for all the events combined (taking into account transportation, packaging, energy for preparation, and disposal). For myself, I feel going tray-less saves my 5%+.