PhillyDeals: Penn sets its taste buds for local produce

The University of Pennsylvania recruits students and faculty from all over. You'd figure they are used to the cosmopolitan best of everything out there on the west bank of the Schuylkill.

So it's a little surprising to hear there's a push at Penn for local food - South Jersey greens, Lancaster County meat - at the cafeterias that feed 4,000 of Penn's undergraduates.

According to vice president Marie Witt, Penn is trying to buy more local produce for the same reason it calls West Philly Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and looks for Philadelphia contractors when the university builds an office.

"Economic inclusion," Witt calls it. "A big part of what we emphasize here is bringing our resources

to leverage our purchasing power" to favor neighbors.

Plus, peer pressure: "Our president, Amy Gutmann, was one of the very first signatories to the Climate Commitment Pledge of the American Association of Sustainability in Higher Education, and we were one of the first to announce our actual plan, [which] has to do with sustainability, acting locally. And ways that you design your food service is one of them," Witt said.

"That doesn't mean we can't be diverse for our international students." She mentions global menus, local ingredients, from "authentic Chinese" to mac and cheese.

We met last week in the cafeteria at English House, a Penn dorm whose lunch menu advertised chicken joints in wine from Eberly Poultry Farm, in Stevens, Lancaster County; butter from Natural by Nature, Avondale; chard from Flaim Farms near Vineland; pasta from Millbridge Farms, Winslow, Jefferson County, and other products "from within 150 miles."

Does the extra cost of buying from boutique growers balance the savings on diesel and storage? "Generally, we are competitive," said Fedele Bauccio, chief executive and founder of Bon Appetit Management Co., a California-based subsidiary (since 2002) of Britain's giant Compass Group, which replaced the Philadelphia-based multinational Aramark as Penn's cafeteria operator this fall.

"This is a culinary act, not a political act," says Bauccio. "Strawberries shouldn't taste the same as tomatoes just because it's winter. To find the right pork producers and natural beef producers, we have to go local."

That day's menus were special in going all-local; Bauccio's goal at Penn is to get the average up to 20 percent this fall, and maybe one-third by next year.

Penn used Bon Appetit when it first "outsourced" meals in 2000 but switched to Aramark two years later. Witt told me that's because Aramark, a larger company, was able to finance cafeteria renovations.

Executive chef Joel Blice, who worked for both companies, told me his job "has improved tremendously" since Bon Appetit sent him out to "source food." Sounds like more work.

"As a chef, someone who appreciates good food," Blice said, "it's not really work when you have the opportunity to develop those relationships with the farmers, see how the food is grown."

Shares of Brandywine Realty Trust rose yesterday after the Radnor office-building investor was rated "Buy" in a report by Janney Montgomery Scott analysts Daniel P. Donlan and Andrew DiZio.

Brandywine sold two state-occupied office buildings in Trenton for $85 million last week, and recently raised

$250 million in a cheaper-than- expected 7.5 percent bond sale. With that cash, Brandywine now has enough "to be a net acquirer of assets going forward," the analysts wrote, and to boost its dividend this quarter.

Brandywine says only that it will use the money for "general corporate purposes." Talk of acquisitions and dividends "are purely the analysts' speculation," Brandywine chief financial officer Howard Sipzner told me.

Investors are looking forward to Brandywine's September 2010 completion of the 30th Street post office renovation and Cira South garage, which will pour $25 million in annual net operating income into Brandywine once the Internal Revenue Service moves there from Northeast Philadelphia. No word yet on the proposed Cira South tower nearby.