The Role of Food Hubs in Enabling Local Sourcing for School Canteens

Summary

Public authorities are increasingly interested in fostering short food supply chains. Starting by increasing the share of local and organic food in school canteens has a big potential but requires the redesign of the physical distribution system to make short food supply chains competitive and sustainable. Food Hubs (FH) have been identified in the literature as enablers of sustainable and efficient food supply chains. This chapter describes the functions and characteristics of FH used for school canteens, and analyses how these FH should be designed to increase local and organic products share in school canteens. The results show that changing allocation from the current one—based on administrative subdivision—to a geographical proximity-based allocation could lead to 25% reductions in vehicle-kilometres travelled.