Center for Good Purchasing Program

The Center for Good Food Purchasing uses the power of procurement and partnerships to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment. We do this through the nationally-networked adoption and implementation of the Good Food Purchasing Program by major institutions.

In less than two years, the Center, along with its national and local partners, has developed commitments from and supported a pipeline of 28 institutions (and growing) in 14 major US cities (with a collective annual food spend of over $900 million) to establish and interpret baseline food purchasing practices. By 2020, the goal is to gain Good Food Purchasing Program commitments from 125 institutions across 30 US cities, leveraging over $1.5 billion in public food dollars to improve the food system and increase access to healthier school meals for over six million students.

The Center manages the Good Food Purchasing Program, working with institutions to establish supply chain transparency from farm to fork and shift towards a values-based purchasing model.

Our approach to food system change emphasizes the use of data to verify commitments that participating institutions make to the five value categories of the Good Food Purchasing Program (local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition), and to quantify impacts in terms of improvements to students’ diets, producer and food chain worker livelihoods, farm animal treatment, and the environment.