Beginning in 2016, Stanford University partnered with the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) in the Better Buying Lab, an ideas incubator that convened food service leaders and behavior change experts, to identify best-in-class strategies for reducing food-related greenhouse gas emissions. This pioneering collaboration also helped lay the groundwork for what would become the Collective Impact and WRI’s Coolfood initiative.

As a co-founder of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative (MCURC), Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) was among the first university dining organizations to recognize the power of campus food programs to drive broader food-systems change. Inspired by the Collective Impact framework featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Stanford and its collaborators explored how the combined influence of colleges and universities could accelerate purchasing shifts toward delicious, nutritious foods with a lower environmental impact.

Between 2019–2024, the MCURC’s cohort of universities has tracked over 400 million pounds of protein purchases and achieved an 18.5% decrease in GHG emissions per kilogram of food purchased among participating institutions. This represents over 46% progress toward our long-term target. In 2024 alone, participating institutions reported 90 million pounds of food purchases across 32 institutions