UBC Undergraduate Research

AMS lighter footprint strategy at 'The Perch' Kubeck, Kevin; Peat, Dara; Warner, Lisa; Yang, Maggie; Yeung, Rossini

Abstract

The focus of our group’s project was to create a resource tool for those involved with the planning and coordinating of the upcoming fine dining restaurant ‘The Perch’, to be located in the new SUB at UBC. Building on the AMS Lighter Footprint Strategy, our methods for compiling resources and developing a handbook consisted of many steps, all which tied back to the vision of sustainability. These included the initial phases of reviewing literature and past AMS projects as well as conducting interviews with local restaurants holding a similar sustainable-fine-dining vision to gain insight on their motives and success factors. From this information our group compiled a list of criteria important for sustainable menu success, which included nutritional, organic, local/seasonal, fair trade, animal welfare, vegetarian, and vegan elements. We then conducted a simple survey to determine the importance of each criterion to a convenience sample, enabling us to gain insight as to how the categories ranked among the public and proceed to make recommendations that best matched the criteria demand. Upon analyzing the gathered data, we found a common theme of using and promoting local/seasonal foods from the restaurant interviews, and through the survey established a list of sustainable criteria ranked from most important to least important being; nutrition, local/seasonal, animal welfare, fair trade, organic, vegetarian, vegan. Further, our group was able to provide recommendations on narrowing ‘The Perch’s menu theme to ingredients that incorporate the popular criteria as indicated by restaurant interviewees and survey participants. Through developing this handbook, we hope to have addressed the needs of the project by targeting the vision of ‘The Perch” restaurant and compiling a list of resources that are easily accessible and useful. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada