Community Eats

We are always looking for more help, so email Renee if you are interested in getting involved.

Check our blog or send us an email at and we'd be happy to put you on our newsletter, in which we announce upcoming Community Eats lunches and other events. Or feel free to send us an email if you have any questions.

Check out our Facebook group for the latest news and to learn about more upcoming events at Sprouts.

What is Community Eats?

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. As a medium to do so, and to create a forum for discussion about food system issues, we serve a free or 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. So 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.

Where does this food come from?

In an effort 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.

Who is Community Eats?

Community Eats is its volunteers! As you might imagine, it takes many, many hours to collect, prepare, and cook the food served at these lunches---all this time is donated by a team of dedicated volunteers.

We're always seeking more eager people who are interested in helping out. If you have some time you'd like to spend with us, send us an email or introduce yourself to us at one of the lunches to find out how you can join us.

I need my own plate?!

Most other food establishments give away thousands of food take-out containers each day, all of which end up in the garbage. 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.

When we cook Community Eats lunches, we usually don't leave the SUB until about 11 at night, when almost everyone else has gone home. We're always shocked by the number of disposable containers littering the building, and we're glad that our project isn't contributing to that waste. 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.

Why Free? Why Donate?

Since we don't pay for the produce we use to cook Community Eats lunches, and volunteer our time to prepare it, we don't want you to have to pay for it. However, it's not often that we're able to collect staple foods (such as rice and beans), from grocers, so these items 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. We collect donations at Community Eats lunches to help cover the cost of these staple items.