Hockaday Food Services provides new vegan choices and puts health initiatives in place for students

It’s a good time to be a vegan at Hockaday.

While food at the Hockaday cafeteria has always strived to achieve a high standard, the cafeteria is staying true to the Hockaday way and pushing the bar even higher. Now, for the first time ever, Hockaday is offering new vegan food options.

Director of Food Services Torie Reynolds, who controls all food-related happenings at Hockaday such as meals and catered events, is very excited.

“It’s hard to be vegan unless people are providing vegan items,” Reynolds said. “We already had a lot of vegetarians, but vegan is a whole other level.”

Vegan senior Alison Berger and vegan Upper School math teacher Rachel Grabow confirm that being vegan is not exactly something you do for fun. Grabow decided to become a vegan eight years ago due to her adversity to the killing of animals, while Berger converted after seeing the numerous health benefits. Cutting out animals and all animal byproducts from your diet is one of the hardships that vegans go through – something that is only made more difficult when one is constantly surrounded by these things.

“[The new vegan options] are awesome,” Grabow said. “It’s nice to have a lot of different food options. I normally just have to eat salads or bring supplements. I really appreciate it a lot.”

Berger is equally as grateful for the new guarantee of vegan options.

“They’ve had vegan foods before, but only sometimes,” she added. “Occasionally I’m forced to just eat fruits and vegetables for lunch. One time they made me a vegan pizza. That was really nice of them.”

Along with the new vegan options, the cafeteria will be adding nutritional information aside every dish they serve, as well as placing healthy vending machines in the Upper School, Tarry House and the new science building within the next few weeks. These vending machines will be filled with snacks purchased from Whole Foods and will replace the current ones. Hockaday will not be the first to jump on this bandwagon; these new machines have already found a home at the Episcopal School of Dallas and the Parish Episcopal School.

Another plus is the pricing of these healthy munchies. Reynolds herself described them as “amazingly well-priced.”

Adding on to the new health renovations in the kitchen, Hockaday is also putting forth an effort to use as many locally-grown products as possible, with the help of Hardie’s, a produce distributor. A new ‘food of the week’ item, always locally-grown, will be advertised on a banner in the dining hall every week, starting next month.

The residence department will see a chance to experience a new smoothie bar that is being put into effect just for boarding, providing a new option for brunch every other weekend.

“Our goal is to make the best quality food, but keep a variety,” Reynolds said. “I think [the students] are going to be really excited.”

– Amanda Kim – Asst. Photo/Graphics Editor –