Pierre St-Germain, director of URI’s Dining Services, is working to strengthen the food system at URI by serving campus-grown food, improving URI’s vendor-selection system, and embracing the varied cultures of URI’s campus community.

Pierre St-Germain, director of URI Dining Services, is reimagining the role of his department, finding ways to ensure that URI’s food system thrives at every stage and that the meals served in URI’s dining halls do more than just fill bellies.

Since St-Germain arrived at URI in 2018, he has expanded Dining Services’ offerings, opening four new campus dining venues and debuting the Rhody Eatz food truck. He’s also ramped up recycling and composting efforts in the dining halls and warehouse and has repurposed warehouse space into a thriving home for Rhody Outpost, a basic needs pantry for students experiencing food insecurity; the pantry serves more than twice the number of students it served two years ago.

URI’s land- and sea-grant missions are what attracted St-Germain to the job at URI, because they emphasize collaboration across departments, advancing the state’s agriculture and aquaculture, and engaging with local communities—priorities that St-Germain says are important parts of a resilient food system.

St-Germain has a lot of ideas. But what he’s known for is implementing ideas, whether they’re his own or someone else’s. “When someone comes to me with an idea, my first inclination is to help them figure it out,” he says.

Tricia Lourenco Boucher ’23, U.S. Army veteran and program facilitator for URI’s Boots to Bushels program, and plant sciences professor Rebecca Brown experienced this firsthand. When Boucher realized that her program, which teaches farming techniques to veterans, would harvest a surplus of food, Brown suggested that maybe URI’s Dining Services could utilize it. “We went to Pierre,” says Boucher, “and he was really supportive of the idea of growing locally and building a food system on our campus.”

St-Germain now pays the salaries for three students to farm with Boucher at the Greene H. Gardiner Crops Research Center—often referred to as the Agronomy Farm—on the Kingston Campus. The farm grows an array of food, from leafy greens to watermelons, and St-Germain purchased the necessary supplies for new crops to be grown this year, including rhubarb, asparagus, and garlic. His support has been instrumental in nearly tripling the farm’s food production in just one year—from 7,500 pounds in 2023 to 20,000 pounds in 2024.

With St-Germain’s support, the Agronomy Farm now grows food specifically for Dining Services, rather than simply donating surplus produce. The farm also grows food for the Free Farmer’s Market and Rhody Outpost, programs that provide food for students in need.

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St-Germain has also changed URI’s approach to food procurement by implementing the principles of the national Good Food Purchasing Program, which encourages public institutions to direct their buying power in support of five core values: local economies, health, valued workforce, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. St-Germain’s vendor-selection criteria consider how vendors incorporate those values into their practices, and he integrates flexibility into contracts to ensure he’s able to put each pillar into action.

St-Germain’s system for putting this framework into practice serves as a model for the state, says Sarah Blau, state nutrition coordinator of the Healthy Eating and Active Living program with the Rhode Island Department of Health. “Institutional purchasing is not glamorous; you are in the weeds of contracting, law, and practice,” she says. “But it can be really impactful, and Pierre is very effective at moving from ideation to planning to action.” She says his “expertise and personability,” along with his background as a chef, have shaped his approach to purchasing. “He prioritizes values beyond simply securing the lowest bidder,” she says. “He humanizes every aspect of the work.”

St-Germain’s experience includes working at the Sundance Ranch in Utah and Atlanta’s acclaimed vegetarian restaurant, Cafe Sunflower. He says he’s always appreciated the interactions food invites between people and sees food as a way to introduce and reflect ethnic and cultural traditions. At URI, he welcomes ideas from the campus community for programming that honors cultural traditions and dishes, and he ensures that the dining halls accommodate students’ dietary needs related to important religious and cultural observances, such as Ramadan.

The Dining Services team has presented Lunar New Year and Day of the Dead celebrations. This year, they hope to celebrate Diwali, a festival of lights in Hindu culture. “We plan to do at least one reflective celebration a year,” says St-Germain, noting that he wants all students to enjoy dishes and traditions meaningful to them. Students, faculty, and staff sometimes bring their families to the dining room for these celebrations, and that commensality unites people. “There’s a level of education that comes with sitting down together to join in conversation and share food,” he says. “It’s important. You might not understand every little thing, but food is like a universal translator.”

—Anna Vaccaro Gray ’12, M.S. ’16

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS