UCSF Mission Bay Campus

On Wednesday, Sep. 29th, I have visited the Farmer's Market on UCSF Mission Bay campus in order to compare with the one on SFSU campus.

My mission was to investigate how the other Universities or communities act to provide educational information about local foods and its value for our environment.

My findings on the market of UCSF

1. The location

The market takes place just in front of the building of Mission Bay campus housing. So, I saw a lot of people purchase fresh vegetables and fruits and enter the building with large bags of food. Also, they have enough space to use .

2. Information Center

There are nice and easy-to-find information center, which has a lot of handouts. They are about the market and its organization, nutrition information, recipes, and a lot of kinds of educational information. This is a good place to let people learn about the value of local foods.

3. SNS

They have Facebook account to attract people's attention. Also, it creates easy-to-access information.

4. Frequent Shopper PUNCH CARD

It gets students keep coming the markers, be a consistent buyer.

5. Cooking Demonstration

It is a good method for educating people the value of local foods. And actually, it is teaching how to live with Farmers Market. The chef buy almost all ingredients on the market just right before his demonstration and show easy cooking in short time. So after the demonstaration, we can try right away becasue there are what to need to buy on the market and we know how to cook with what you got.

6. A great variety of food

The fact we can buy a great variety of local food on the same market leads less carbon footprint because we have to drive to get a different market.

After observing both markets in SFSU and UCSF, the biggest difference was the students' behaviors on the market. While SFSU students seem to buy the items on the market as their snacks, UCSF students seem to buy the items as necessities. Buying local farmer's product is a part of life for those students who live on Mission Bay campus.