Working to get Kosher food might be hard and require some work, but it has worked at many other schools and it has the potential to be a game-changer for your Jewish community - now and for the future.

 

Things you need to figure out:

• Supply: is there anything available and do you want to go up a level from what currently exists, or are you starting from scratch? Are there nearby off-campus options?

• Demand: this includes total Jewish population, involved population, and observant populations. This also includes undergrad students, grad students, professors, local residents. You should also figure out what percent of these populations eat on campus and how often, or what percent would be inclined to do so.

  • Organize a petition, a survey, and focus groups to demonstrate what the need is and what the target population is. You want to show that it's a substantial quantity of students whom this affects, and that it affects them in a serious manner.

• Levels and Logistics: what level of kosher food you’re aiming for depends on the need and setup of your campus, and what is is realistically sustainable. The primary question is getting a kosher meal plan vs. kosher food items; other parameters include scope and diversity of kosher food, how frequent and accessible, hechsher options, and how integrated into the University dining system meal plan (see Implementation Options and Other Options below)

• Costs: figure out how much it might cost and what sort of revenue it would generate. A lot of things in life come down to money, so if you find a donor who's willing to sponsor it or donate to the university conditionally, it should be pretty easy to make it happen. Getting a kosher meal plan is a lot more ambitious and costly than just getting kosher food items, so you’ll have to figure out what’s realistic. Depending on what levels and logistics you choose, costs to consider may include:

  • the [added] cost of kosher food

  • construction of kitchen - 2 if want meat/milk; best if university’s already doing renovations

  • new dishes/flatware - unless uses disposable

  • mashgiach and hechsher: depends on brand & distance, certification alone can be $5,000/year

• Allies: this could be a university official (president, provost, etc.), Hillel staff, community members, alumni, board members or donors who are sympathetic to or interested in the cause - they might have a say, or at least a partial say, or may be able to sway those with say. Among the reasons for their involvement could be financial, logical, or personal ones. Pitch to them and get their buy-in (literal or figurative), and commitment (written is best) to your cause.

  • One ally you might not have suspected is Muslim students/student groups, who require halal food. A bunch of universities have joint halal-kosher dining halls (Williams, Rice, Northeastern, Wellesley, Brown, Smith, Mt Holyoke, Oberlin, Case Western), and besides for getting more people on your side, showing the diversity and bridge-building ability could be a huge asset.

 

Plan of action

• Have a team working on this, with 1 or 2 point people who are committed to taking the lead on this and are well-versed, persuasive, and passionate about the subject.

• Put together a proposal - which includes the assessment of current supply and demand and whose selling point is the imbalance between the two. Also include your goal, stakeholders, and how it could be feasibly obtained (costs, logistics).

• Contact people in charge of dining and/or University administrators and request a meeting. Bring your proposal, your team, and potentially your allies. Present an overview, find out what they think, if it’s feasible, what the barriers are and what they need from you.

• Agree and follow-up on implementation plan.

 

Convincing the University

In terms of how to convince the University, here are a few tips and starting points:

• Many universities are looking to attract Jews - whether for diversity, financial reasons (see ‘money’, above), or for academic reasons - and having kosher food is often an attractant, even for those who aren't observant.

  • For universities not already looking to attract Jews, you’ll have to convince them that having Jews is better for them: you can show that most top universities (all Ivies, most high-ranked schools) have kosher options. Also use examples from similarly sized or tiered schools, or high profiled or recent updates

• Observant students go in droves to Penn and Columbia and in significant numbers to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell, although rarely to Dartmouth

• Of schools rated 1-20, all but 2 (CalTech, Notre Dame) have kosher meal plans

• Universities should also be looking to accommodate all of their students and be accepting and open to religious requirements, of which kosher food is a major one. So if many or even any students exist for whom kosher food is a requirement, it’s their right to be accommodated, and the university’s responsibility to provide for them.

  • If it gets nasty you could play the "religious discrimination" card- but that could get messy.

• Assuming there’s a Jewish community, supporting it as an entity could be important in building a university community, and providing kosher food is a core way to do that.

• Assuming observant students will eat kosher no matter what, it’s not right to make them feel antisocial and isolated from their friends and the rest of the university by making them eat on their own.

• Promoting kosher food as healthy dining, or as a novel food genre - not just for Jews! 50% of kosher consumers buy kosher food for its “general healthfulness” and roughly one-third “believe that kosher food safety standards are better”; only 8% of kosher consumers are religious Jews.

 

Implementation Options

• Offerings: meal plan or other (sandwich station, catered packaged sandwiches/salads, local restaurants, microwavable meals, labeled products in the dining hall, items in retail store)

• Affiliation: through Hillel, Chabad, other (e.g. CJL), or just through University

• Location: separate building (e.g. Hillel), separate room, or separate station

• Meal plan: separate (need to opt out?), added cost, or regular

• When: B/L/D, just L/D, just L or D; 7 days/week, no Sundays, no weekends, only few days/week

• Other services: Passover meal plans, Shabbat/holiday meals, kosher food at university events/stadium, catering

• Food options: Vegan, meat/vegetarian only, co-cp, +Halal

• Hechsher: national Orthodox organization (OU, Star-K), local/regional Orthodox organization, local Orthodox rabbi, local/regional Chabad rabbi, nonOrthodox hechsher (see rationales below)

  • You need to find a local agency or one that's close enough to travel to you (or willing to send someone to you - which might cost most). Consult the listing of every college with kosher food (see below), which also lists the hechshers and locations.

• Mashgiach: full-time, shared, students (training?)

• Roll out: trial phase for 1 semester, in stages to be scaled, or open full-scale

 

Other options

If the University isn’t able to help you get kosher food, there are a few other ways to deal with getting kosher food:

• Working out a dining plan through Hillel or Chabad

• Getting fresh meals (e.g. sandwiches) delivered from a distributor or local supplier.

• Getting frozen meals delivered from a distributor, storing them in a personal freezer, and heating them up in a microwave

  • Contact us if you’re interested in this, as we can perhaps help sponsor it.

 

Why reliable/Orthodox hechsher?

• In order to make everyone comfortable and to allow as many people as possible to avail themselves of the kosher food, it's important that the kashrut is acceptable to everyone. And using the lowest common denominator principle for kosher food, that means Orthodox hechsher. It probably won’t cost that much more and no one won't eat Orthodox-certified food.

• The biggest and most consistent group of kosher food consumers are Orthodox students - or at least observant Conservative students.

• In terms of attracting students, it's often Orthodox students who are most careful about kashrut and most interested in that feature when looking at colleges - so if they want to become/remain appealing to the majority of kosher-seekers, it pays to have an Orthodox certification.

• Sometimes there's a fear that if you start accommodating Orthodox Jews then they'll take over - but a) that’s discriminatory and b) that’s (probably) never going to happen

 

Example Success Stories

• small colleges recruiting Jews with kosher food

• Star-K's new kosher dining halls

• add your own here!

 

Resources:

• H2H’s map and list of Colleges with Kosher Food (sorted by meal/food options, hechsher, location, and date)

• MSA’s guide to getting Halal on campus

• Proposal for Kosher Food on Campus (for kashrut agencies)