Sometimes a few small changes can have big impacts, and when Scarborough Hospital came on board for the Challenge, their strategy was simple. Take a few items of local produce and replace them with ones grown locally. By embarking on a year-long preserving project, the hospital was able to replace imported peaches, tomatoes, pears, and berries with local ones, sourced seasonally and frozen for off-season use in newly developed from-scratch recipes. Building on this model, they will be using their new flash-freezing and sealing equipment to introduce local vegetables next year. By focusing on a few items, Scarborough Hospital was able to purchase 81 per cent of these products locally.

What they told us: “The staff is quite happy with the speedy process of sealing and freezing local produce, and we are able to preserve even more local food than we had originally anticipated. We can even customize the bags to suit our foodservice recipes.” - Susan Bull, Manager, Nutrition and Food Services, Scarborough Hospital