That year, the Lawrenceville School, where I am the Food Service Director, began what would prove to be a long and rewarding journey. We took on the daunting challenge of becoming a green and sustainable campus. My first challenge was to convince the food service contract company I was employed by to purchase from local and sustainable farms. This purchasing request was unheard of in the current school contract feeding environment. To understand this, however, I must first describe how food arrived at my kitchen.

Menus and recipes were developed by corporate chefs then approved by corporate dietitians who then would submit the ingredient list for the menus to the corporate purchasing division, where the real decisions of purchasing are made. Once the items were identified and specifications determined, they were put out for bid to the large industrial food manufacturers to determine price, availability, and most importantly, large-volume purchase incentives and rebates. When this process was completed and the food bids awarded to the manufacturers, the corporate-approved ingredients were then stocked by the approved national contracted food distributor. At my school, the approved menu items list was downloaded to my purchasing system, which restricted me in selecting only the items that appeared on the approved list to be delivered by approved vendors. From my computer I would enter my purchasing needs and electronically send my order to a password-protected website two days before my scheduled delivery date. These systems controlled my ability to know who was producing the food and where it was coming from. This complexity can be rationalized when considering that because most school food budgets are limited, companies are forced to specialize in feeding students cheaply and efficiently while aiming for the greatest profit. But let's get back to that egg.

The eggs that I was able to purchase through this system were known in the food service contract business as "liquid eggs." The product comes delivered in large, 20-pound plastic dispenser bags packaged in cardboard with a pouring spout. Envision boxed wine, and now imagine the box filled with ultra-pasteurized, homogenized, caged, medicated, enriched, whipped egg product with citric acid added to preserve freshness. For me to procure organic, local, free-range eggs from the farmer adjacent to the school's property was way out of the box. These are just a few of many problems the food service company had with this request: the farmer was not on the approved vendor list and did not carry a large general liability insurance policy; the eggs were still in their original packaging (a shell) and, therefore, could be hard to work with and possibly contaminated; the product was not pasteurized and potentially unsafe; and the corporate purchasing division could not negotiate a price or a large-volume purchase incentive rebate with the local farmer.

When it finally happened, it proved to be a tumultuous changeover because the last noted reason was the biggest problem. I was currently paying 90 cents a pound for the liquid egg product, a large percentage of which was "rebated" to the food service contractor. The price of the organic, local, free-range eggs at $4.50 per dozen, with no rebate, would cost approximately three dollars more for the same amount of eggs. In my opinion, however, the quality, taste, freshness, wholesomeness, and environmentally responsible breeding practices was worth the extra money.

I first started buying the eggs with the limited petty cash my school account was allocated for miscellaneous purchases, violating every corporate policy for purchasing and exposing myself to possible termination. This felt dangerous and, at the same time, remarkably satisfying. I then decided to go through the process of requesting my local farm, Cherry Grove, to be listed as an approved vendor. This proved to be a lengthy and time consuming procedure, but I was determined to see the process through. My second step was to request the new vendor approval application, which took two weeks to arrive; once the application was completed I submitted it for corporate approval. A month later, Cherry Grove was contacted by the food service contract company to submit their insurance documentation and to negotiate payment terms. And this is where the wheels fell off the tractor. The food service company's accounts payable division typically pays their vendors 45 days following the end of the month. This meant Cherry Grove would not be paid for a delivery of eggs made on September 1 until sometime in the middle of November-a payment term farmers cannot accept and survive on. I found this to be the case with every local farmer I tried to purchase from, thus ending my quest for local and sustainable food under the direction of a corporate food service company.

I am proud to say at this time, in 2008, that the Lawrenceville School now receives a weekly supply of Cherry Grove eggs along with many locally grown and produced foods directly from the farmers and artisans in our area. Because of the inability of the large food service contractors to change the way they buy food, I have become a chef by trade and a food service company owner by necessity.

Gary D. Giberson is a chef, food service consultant,
and the founder and owner of Sustainable Fare, an
environmentally responsible food service company.