Mark your calendars! Every Friday from 11:30 AM-1:30 PM, the usual Sprouts activities are replaced by a delicious for-donation hot lunch! Bring your own plate and cutlery and enjoy the variety of vegan dishes cooked up by our volunteers.

I need my own plate?!

We ask that you bring your own dish and cutlery to Community Eats lunches, because eating from reusable containers is a really simple way to start making more sustainable food choices. We're always shocked by the number of disposable containers littering the SUB. Our hope is that people who come to Community Eats lunches will make a habit of bringing a reusable food container with them even when they eat elsewhere, so that they'll never need to use a disposable one again.

Where does this food come from?

To decrease the amount of edible food that goes to waste, Community Eats lunches are cooked with food that would otherwise be thrown out due to appearance (i.e. blemishes, bruises, etc), quality, or damage (i.e. broken or punctured packaging). During the week, volunteers collect all of this food from grocers and distributors and bring it to campus to be turned into a delicious meal.

Why free? Why donate???

We don't pay for the produce we use to cook Community Eats lunches, but the staple foods (such as rice and beans) are usually purchased from Sprouts. We're happy to support this student run business, as well as to feature organic (and often local) food in our meals. Donations are collected to help cover the cost of these staple items.

About the project

Community Eats is a student volunteer led initiative at UBC. We are dedicated to fostering food security and encouraging community engagement on and beyond our campus. To create a forum for discussion about food system issues, we serve a by-donation, nutritious hot lunch every Friday during the regular University semester.

Sprouts has generously offered their cafe as a space in which to hold these lunches. You'll find that the usual Sprouts activities are put on hold Fridays from 11:30 AM-1:30 PM, when Community Eats lunches are served.