“There are multiple ways the Culinary Institute of America works together with its produce industry partners to increase the use of fresh produce on foodservice menus,” Susan Renke, director of corporate relations and strategic initiatives for the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, CA, told The Produce News. Gina Nucci of Mann Packing participating in a CIA-sponsored conference that emphasized the use of more fresh produce.“Among our initiatives are the custom consulting programs, which include new product ideation sessions with professional chefs led by the CIA consulting team, recipe development, recipe contests, menu research and development, customer education and training with custom curriculum created for our partners by CIA chef instructors.”

The CIA also has a digital media program, ProChef, that includes custom content development, video production, web hosting and educational content.

The institute’s gift-in-kind programs include products featured in one or more of its campuses to be used by students and instructors in classroom education as well as in its restaurants. This helps to provide exposure to consumers, students, alumni and trade partners.

“The CIA’s leadership retreats and conferences [www.ciaprochef.com/strategic] focus on topics and trends crucial to the foodservice industry, including flavor development, health and wellness, nutrition science, volume foodservice menu research and development and collaboration between production agriculture and volume foodservice,” added Renke.

Founded in 1946, the CIA is an independent, not-for-profit college offering associate and bachelor’s degrees with majors in culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and culinary science, as well as certificate programs.

Considered a premier culinary college, the CIA provides thought leadership in the areas of professional excellence, health and wellness, sustainability, and world cuisines and cultures through research and conferences.

In addition, the CIA offers courses for professionals and enthusiasts, as well as consulting services in support of innovation for the foodservice and hospitality industry. Besides St. Helena, the CIA’s campuses are located in Hyde Park, NY, San Antonio, TX, and Singapore.

In her position, Renke works with its produce industry partners on its leadership retreats and conferences.

“Along with my counterpart, Shara Orem, director of sponsorship planning and outreach, we secure sponsors for our programs and work closely with our internal teams on content, logistics and operational aspects of running the retreats,” she explained. “Our conferences provide the practical aspects of how to add more fresh produce to menus by giving the operators responsible for thousands of foodservice operations around the country the tools and the knowledge they need to create more plant-based menus. These tools include culinary and operational applications, consumer trends, and acceptance and connections to produce producers.”

Specifically, the leadership retreats and conferences provide relevant program content developed to draw the right attendees to the right programs, such as foodservice operators and culinary professionals responsible for menu development across foodservice segments. These include fine dining, hotels, cruise lines, quick-serve and casual dining chains, contract management, college dining, health care and school foodservice.

“Depending on the conference, the content for the operator attendees may include culinary demonstrations by well-known chefs and CIA instructors, industry trends and hands-on team market basket exercises in the CIA kitchens using our sponsors’ products,” added Renke. “We provide a forum for the sponsors to make personal connections and develop long-term business relationships with these operators, including current and potential customers.”

Amy Myrdal Miller, senior director of programs and culinary nutrition for the CIA, works closely with the organization’s presenters to develop content for its programs that have a nutrition and agricultural focus, including those where the CIA partners with the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of California-Davis.

Myrdal Miller has been instrumental in leading many of the CIA’s health and wellness initiatives, including its Healthy Menus Collaborative. She is well known in the produce industry and recently moderated a panel with menu-development chefs at the Produce Marketing Association’s Foodservice Conference.

On the topic of locally grown, and how many chefs appear intent on maintaining a menu of locally food products, Myrdal Miller said that locally grown demand is not waning at all, but definition is crucial to a better understanding by everyone.

“At our leadership retreats the tension between independents and national chains is sometimes evident,” she said. “At one of our conferences one of the McDonald’s representatives spoke up, saying that when its company says ‘local,’ it means all of North America.”

Defining locally grown is one of the major issues that foodservice operators face today. Consumers, Myrdal Miller pointed out, think that local translates to sustainable, resulting in fewer food miles.

“The answer to this is that it depends on what the best distribution system is for any given company,” she said. “Foodservice operators on all scales are asking themselves questions like ‘How do we change our menus?’ ‘Can we move from fresh to processed in the winter months?’ They’re all looking at this issue because they are all interested in sustainability, and even more interested in what their consumers think.”

She added that there is increasingly more consumer research being done on this topic. Campuses in the Northeast, for example, are looking at New Jersey tomatoes.

“Schools in that region may decide to purchase processed New Jersey tomatoes so that they can tell students that their tomatoes are locally grown even in the winter,” she said.

“But the definition is the real problem,” Myrdal Miller continued. “It’s somewhat apparent that consumers are defining it mostly as the product being produced in North America.”

Another topic of interest to the CIA is the strong and growing Hispanic and Asian trend in food items. At its 2013 annual Worlds of Flavor Conference on Global Connections Conventions held every October, about 200 chefs were in attendance to learn more about using the less common Hispanic and Asian foods from chefs who specialize in these cuisines.

“These chefs are really interested in learning more about these food items,” said Myrdal Miller. “If chefs are able to bring unique herbs and chilies, and then they pass around the dish they’ve prepare for everyone to sample, a new trend is easily started. Chefs in North America say that the same items produced here don’t taste the same, likely due to soil composition, climate conditions and other factors, so that too has to be considered.”

More produce on plates has multiple benefits, and the CIA is aware of this. It cuts down on cost because the protein portion can be reduced. It cuts down on calories, which helps to address the obesity problem in the United States. And flavored correctly, it can actually enhance the flavor of a dish.

“The Mushroom Council’s ‘Swap It or Top It’ campaign is a great example of how this is being accomplished today,” said Myrdal Miller. “Numerous sample studies have been done that prove that people prefer their meatballs when half of the ingredients have been replaced by mushrooms.”