Twentse Canteen

The Twente Canteen (TC) aims to persuade government agencies such as municipalities, healthcare institutions and university, to promote the consumption of locally produced food in their canteen. The municipality of Almelo has taken action to promote regionally produced food by taking up the condition in the procurement, that a minimum of 25% of the food offer in the canteens should be produced in the region of Twente. This revision was desired by the public authority as it wanted to adhere to the slowly increasing amount of people who pays atttention to sustainability and also in order to set an example for other governmental bodies.
This new procurement rule has resulted in the obligation for the caterer to ensure that 25% of the canteen range is from regional producers. This means that the logistic is still the responsibility of the caterer. Also, it doesn't mention a minimum amount of regional producers so the caterer is allowed to contract only one regional producer in order to have achieved the condition. In that case, it would mean that the full potential of a local authority supporting numerous regional producers by stocking the canteen largely with their products, in reality is not being used.
To further stimulate consumption of regional produced food, we have developed the project “The Seasoning of Twente”. This is an expansion of the Twente Canteen, an addition of two distribution channels (webhop and physical shop) and a coordinator.