Student-run non-profit Campus Nutrition’s website launched on August 24 to provide information to UBC students about the over 100 food vendors on campus.
Founded by recent UBC graduates Arman Mojtabavi, Sepehr Kamal and Kasra Kamal in 2019, Campus Nutrition was developed by a team of student volunteers in order to help members of the UBC community navigate the diversity of food options on campus.
“There’s lots of small resources available to students and the community … UBC Food Services provides information about food outlets that they run, the AMS does similarly, and then there’s about 70 independent food outlets also on campus,” said Sepehr Kamal, one of the founders. “It’s very scattered, and there’s no complete source of information at the moment.”
The website allows students to use filters such as price, cuisine and location to easily search for specific food vendors.
“We expect our resource to really help the UBC community, the students and staff in UBC, to navigate the large selection of on-campus food vendors, discover new places to eat and ultimately make more informed eating decisions,” said Mojtabavi. “We want to create a sense of community through a shared interest in food.”
The founders claim the website will also promote local businesses on campus that have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic and increase awareness of food and nutrition clubs on campus.
Campus Nutrition has received external support from UBC Food Services and UBC Wellbeing. The initiative has also received the Innovative Project Fund grant from the AMS, as well as two grants from the Science Undergraduate Society.
Now that Campus Nutrition has launched, the team hopes to expand the resource by adding new features such as specific dietary information and a review system for the food vendors on campus.
“We really look at it as an evolving project, and our long-term hope is that … we can take what we built and replicate it at another university campus as well,” said Sepehr.
“The UBC campus is quite unique, most campuses are not massive and don’t have over 100 food vendors like UBC does, but there absolutely is potential for this to be useful at other campuses.”