Close

Food

The sustainable food agenda has always been important at Oxford Brookes. We recognise the importance of providing healthy food. As well as the environmental, economic and social impacts surrounding food systems. 

Read more about our ethos and accreditations on our dedicated food@brookes website, including being the world’s first Fairtrade University. And see refer to our Sustainable Food Strategy and Sustainable Food Action Plan for more details.


Food salad bar

Working with partners

Gather & Gather, our catering partners, were awarded 3 stars in the Sustainable Restaurant Association ‘Food Made Good’ program for their commitments to sustainability.

Key contract drivers are to promote healthy and sustainable food options at Brookes. This includes:

  • actively sourcing locally grown produce
  • promoting seasonal foods
  • maintaining sustainable food and animal welfare accreditations such as Fairtrade
  • reducing waste across the offering
  • delivering greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Forum cafe

Fairtrade and much more

We are proud to be a Fairtrade University. This enables us to make a positive contribution to developing countries by:

  • offering better prices
  • providing decent working conditions
  • providing local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers.

We also work closely with ‘Good Food Oxford’ and are signatories to the ‘Good Food Oxford Pledge’. We aim to catalyse actions by individuals and organisations that promote a healthy, fair, ethical and environmentally sustainable food system in and around Oxford. And we encourage our community to get involved in local projects.

Fairtrade logo

Vegan and vegetarian menus

In line with the latest research we are moving away from a vegan framing approach. This means that Instead of a separate vegan catering outlet, we will embed vegan and vegetarian offerings across all our menus. 

Assessing our menus

We completed Greenhouse Gas Assessment baselines of our menus and set new SMART targets to reduce our impact. We are a member of Oxford's Sustainable Palm Oil initiative and have completed a sustainable palm oil audit of our sites.