3.2.1. Thematic Analysis of Customers’ Experiences
For year two, ten returning customers were interviewed regarding their experiences when visiting FND. Three major themes emerged: (1) fresh, flavorful food; (2) smiling, supportive staff; and (3) personal transformation.
Table 2 shows the themes and subthemes in these three areas. The full table enriched with quotes from participants can be found in
Appendix B (
Table A2).
Theme 1 reflected customers’ comments about fresh, flavorful food, which pointed to the look and feel of FND. It was not difficult to spot FND in retail and residential dining, as the red-white checkered decor had a “farmers market look”. Customers commented that the station with local produce displayed and recipes to take was “beautifully set up” and looked “just so fresh”. The FND station also included announcements of Farmhouse Fridays (cooking) and other events and the menu itself. The menu changed weekly, with no rotation, and featured mostly regionally procured food except for olive oil and some spices. Customers were simply amazed by the variety and creativity, expressing this by saying “this is delicious”, “prepared in a way that brings out different flavors”, and “(I) appreciate you do something different every week”, even though some also acknowledged the “taste difference”. One customer mentioned that FND was “the one healthy place on campus I can eat”. FND meals were priced lower than other less healthful foods in the retail space, as an incentive; thus, customers mentioned the “great price” for such high-quality, locally sourced, healthy food.
Theme 2 focused on the smiling and supportive staff. One customer mentioned how “helpful and knowledgeable and friendly” the students were, that “they always had a huge smile on their face” and were visibly excited to being there, serving and supporting customers in eating more healthfully.
In retail, FND was serving two meals or a total of 150 servings per week to customers. Eating at FND seemed to help people eat better at home, as expressed by the following quote: “I always feel really successful in my personal eating after I have finished my FND lunch”. After students designed the menu, procured and harvested the food, prepared it, and served it, the verbal delivery was not only filled with information on sourcing, flavor, nutrition, and sustainability but also rich in passion and joy to serve food on campus that was truly from “next door” with the farmer’s story attached to it. One customer mentioned “I like the way you describe the content of each meal” and another said, “You really get the impression that everyone helping out is really excited to be there and to serve food”.
Theme 3 highlighted personal transformation. FND led to personal transformation in shopping and cooking practices, partially because of exploring unfamiliar ingredients, as one customer put it “expanding my horizons”, shopping with more consciousness, and trialing new things “with ideas for doing stuff at home”. Most importantly, SWELL meals were delivered with education, which was highlighted by a customer saying, “Everybody needs to know what healthy eating is all about” and another adding, “I didn’t know [healthy eating] could be as good as this is”.
3.2.2. Thematic Analysis of Volunteers’ Experiences
For year three, eight volunteers were also interviewed regarding their experiences when working in FND. Three major themes emerged: (1) awareness; (2) knowledge and skills; and (3) connection.
Table 3 shows the themes and subthemes in these three areas. The full table enriched with quotes from participants can be found in
Appendix B (
Table A3).
Theme 1 highlighted awareness to foods volunteers had not seen before. One volunteer said, “There were many vegetables that I didn’t know the names of, had never tried, [and] didn’t see in the grocery store before, and now I do.” Volunteers at FND were exposed to a variety of fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients and were taught by FND leads how to be creative in the kitchen and use these “new” foods to prepare delicious, healthy meals. Volunteers also got one meal at FND free of charge per week in appreciation for their work, which offered them an opportunity to see and live the experience full circle, witnessing their hard labor brought to fruition during service. Many of the recipes prepared by FND were plant-based, and this emphasis on plant-based eating influenced the volunteers’ own food choices, shifting some toward reducing their meat intake and incorporating more plants into their diets. One volunteer commented that FND “pushed me more toward a plant-based diet. I am Cuban so there’s meat in every single meal every day, and I don’t do that anymore. FND has definitely changed my habits and thoughts of what healthy eating is”.
Theme 2 focused on knowledge and skills pertaining to food and cooking. Volunteers articulated that they gained invaluable skills in the kitchen. One volunteer mentioned “many students had never worked in foodservice before and just being in the kitchen, being around equipment was huge”. They were exposed to a variety of local grains, beans, and produce, and when they volunteered, the FND leads would make sure the volunteers knew how to hold a knife properly as well as chop the produce, cook different grains, soak and cook dry beans, and navigate large commercial kitchens. Volunteers expressed gaining a deeper understanding of where the foods they prepared came from, for example saying, “I did not know we grew a lot of stuff here at our farmhouse” and “I learned a lot about different foods and from where these foods were sourced”. For example, the statements “just being able to see where it comes from” and “knowing that everything is locally sourced” related to FND’s procurement commitment, which was always a critical topic, along with food safety skills, when the menu preparation with volunteers started. Furthermore, volunteering with FND gave individuals exposure to and the skills necessary to educate on topics of local food and cooking, such that this newly acquired knowledge could transfer into their future professions. This was summarized by the following: “FND added another aspect of nutrition to my knowledge and to my practical use when I become a registered dietitian” and “It’s something that I can utilize, even with athletes that I know could benefit from it”.
Theme 3 is related to personal and inter-personal connections. Food preparation was at the same time each week when students would come together to work toward a common goal: preparing delicious local food for the campus community. One volunteer said, “I love this program… FND creates community. It brings us all together”. FND not only connected individuals, but it also helped them connect with food and build a better relationship with food. “Through FND, I learned more about food and got a better relationship with food.” “It was good to see a different side of foodservice that’s more appreciative and more exciting to work with.” As a result of the freshly picked produce, the kitchen smelled not of grease or sugary bakery items but of irresistible flavors and food that looked like it came straight out of the soil, vibrant in color and life, rather than pale and out of a plastic bag. This surprisingly new connection with food also led individuals to become more mindful. “Healthy eating is more than just eating a fruit and vegetable with each meal. I think it has more to do with where it comes from, how it was grown, and the people involved in that process.” Synthesizing the experience of FND for volunteers was probably best expressed by the chosen title for the graduate project reporting on the experience of volunteers with the statement “the future dietitian cooks”!
3.2.3. Thematic Analysis of Leads’ Experiences
For year three, three leads were interviewed regarding their experiences when working in FND. Three major themes emerged: (1) becoming a leader; (2) peer teaching and learning; and (3) food systems knowledge, skills, and advocacy.
Table 4 shows the themes and subthemes in these three areas. The full table enriched with quotes from participants can be found in
Appendix B (
Table A4).
Theme 1 was focused on becoming a leader, with leaders having to hold a lot of moving parts including planning and procurement, harvesting, cooking food, serving meals, marketing the menu, and educational messaging. One lead expressed it by saying, “As a leader, you just have to always put that face on and make decisions. People are counting on you. At the beginning, it was overwhelming, juggling so many roles in the kitchen. Sometimes, I just wanted to be in a corner with a cutting board and cut the beets”. Handling large quantities of farm-fresh food, harvested just hours before preparation, teaching concepts and skills such as food safety and knife skills to volunteers while also delegating tasks, dealing with challenges such as seasonal supply or cooking with unknown ingredients, and creatively adjusting the recipe based on familiar customer expectation was a big responsibility that required full effort and commitment. Leads expressed needing to consistently “stay(ing) engaged, focused, and fully committed to the work”. There were so many challenges to manage. “There was so much food in the fall to prepare, it would take three hours just to wash the food and we had not even started cooking it", “cooking with unknown ingredients” or “odd balls like the tomatillo and how do we make that part of the meal”. In commercial kitchens on this scale, it is usually the menu and recipe that guides the cooking. In FND, this was somewhat flipped, where the ingredients, especially if unexpected or unknown, lead the menu and required recipe adjustments. While this was a challenge, it also offered opportunities for creativity. FND leads were expressing their excitement even if they were under pressure. “To be put in that leadership and management role as a graduate assistant was a lot of pressure, but it also made me rise to the occasion. And you do things that you did not think you could do. The commitment, I think, was really amazing. And you get out of it what you put into it and I cared a whole lot about it. I would stay awake at night and think about it. I would draw diagrams of how I was going to set up the bay at FND the next day. I would stay up at night and do that. I loved it.”
Theme 2, peer teaching and learning, was especially informed by the lead students’ steep learning curve, feeling inspired, and yearning to pass it on to others. While in the kitchen with volunteers, FND leads exercised the highest order of command as leaders and managers, following their action plans and ensuring safe practices, while also teaching what they had just learned to their student peers. “Running a foodservice operation with orders, money, procurement, catering … brought about necessary collaboration” as one lead expressed in preparation for the weekly action plan, which required “a lot of thinking”, “including our own ideas” not just “flipping cookbooks or pulling recipes” off the internet. “It had an impact on me, so I like(d) shar(ing) that.”
The kitchen work was not comparable with handling culinary work in a conventional supply chain. There were “bins and boxes with food straight from the earth”. This new learning was often overwhelmingly challenging. Yet, FND’s cyclic experience enabled a continuous, reciprocal dialogue from teacher to learner about farming and gardening, opportunities for creativity through all the senses, and a platform for students to “learn from mistakes” without significant consequences due to the academic environment. All leads expressed similarly how “working on the farm” and “farming and gardening” meant they were “able to teach skills in the kitchen”.
Theme 3, food systems knowledge, skills, and advocacy, emphasized the enhanced understanding and navigation within the food value chain. First, common among all leads was that FND built food literacy “opening eyes to food, cooking, and gardening”, understanding “seasonality”, and becoming more aware that nutritiousness depends, at least to some degree, on “trying to learn where food comes from”—the food’s origin and when and how it was grown. Comments such as “I never tied local food together with nutrition” reflect significant curricular gaps in nutrition and dietetics. Secondarily, building relationships and shifting values through the newly developed relationships with farmers were also important. Leads identified new relational values of food, associating food with “planetary health” and expanding definitions of healthy eating from calories and nutrients, such as protein, to food, the food system, and sustainability. Participating on farms, experiencing the sweat from harvesting and what goes into food production, both in urban gardens and on rural farms, provided a deeper level of understanding of the food system and food value chain, in one lead’s words, “why it is important that we use these foods”, in the support of the regional community, food security, and conservation of open lands for agriculture.
To summarize the findings from year three, FND leads learned to align their thinking, planning, and procurement with the constraints of food availability in a regional context. What used to be common sense in seasonality had to be relearned. The interaction with local farmers and soiling their own hands weekly while physically harvesting what was fresh taught them so many aspects about food that started with soil, water, climate, biodiversity, and seeds. Environmental challenges, such as drought in the West or elevation and the length of the growing season were topics that brought more understanding to the limited availability or the type of food, its flavor, culinary use, and nutritional benefits along with its origin—sometimes being indigenous or ancient. For FND volunteers, food preparation led by their graduate peers increased their awareness to the foods grown in Colorado and the climate-friendly, healthy SWELL meals and introduced some level of environmental awareness and food production while increasing practical knowledge and skills in institutional foodservice settings. FND also brought them a renewed sense of community and food connections. They too learned about the food system they were working in, its interdependence, and collaborative spirit while working together in the kitchen, of course, distracted by smells, sights, and flavors from this fresh food. What was tough for the leaders to juggle seemed to be softened by the joy of cooking together, which was so well reflected by the consistent return of volunteers.
The quote below sums up the experience by one of the most experienced student leads, indicating a deeper understanding through immersion in FND.
“Being able to have my hands in the garden, there was something very special that I was able to transfer into the kitchen. Coming with bins and bins and bins of fresh produce from the garden, much of them I never had true exposure to. You hear about leeks, tomatillos, many kinds of peppers. But to be able to harvest, then take it in an electric cart over to campus and learn how to cook with it, which part of it you eat and which part you don’t eat. Can you eat the seeds? Do you take them out? Are they spicy? Sweet? What about the skin? How do you cook it? And it was so fresh. I had never dealt with such fresh produce before. Never in my life had I taken all the food from the garden and then cooked it. That was brand new. Being able to have experience with food and also learning about the local farms and identify(ing) which farms have what food and at what time. Learning the seasonal calendar was a learning curve for me. But the food aspect of it is amazing. Learning to cook with different herbs, how the fresh food can really make a dish. You don’t have to do a lot to it when the produce is so fresh and flavorful. You don’t need to add a ton of spices or salt and you don’t need to cook it in any special way to make it taste great. And I think that was something that really was amazing that both the customers and I were able to recognize quickly. The customers would express how flavorful and amazing the food was, and we would tell them, it’s just five ingredients all tossed together. A light bulb went off for them and for me. I started to know food differently, despite my previous culinary and sustainability training. It just goes to show that learning it in the classroom is one thing, and hearing about it is one thing, but actually being fully submerged in doing it is another thing.”
The peer teaching and learning from leads to volunteers touched on all components of food literacy, including critical food literacy. The recipe development process followed by the ambitious action plan from harvest to service required trans-disciplinary thinking and action. The menu included both environmental and health objectives, but it was additionally confined by the availability of products and taught the students lessons of restraint, flexibility, creativity, and ignited forgotten skills in home economics to extend the seasons of food (e.g., canning, freezing). It also involved the transport of harvested food for “mise en place” in commercial kitchens and unpacking, combining, and bulking up recipes, costing the menu based on purchases, while keeping track of farmer names and locations. The educational portion often asked for interaction with the farmer or food hub, learning about their stories, the history and culture of their crops, experiencing a small piece of the lives of American family farmers, and their hardship of staying afloat. Society’s romanticism of farming or gardening was replaced by sober knowledge, empathy, and arising commitment to participate in and contribute to a thriving food system. As one lead put it “how much work goes into food production is a humbling experience. I have more respect for food and want to do it justice”.