Food for Thought: A Conference Center’s Corporate Social Responsibility

Most conference attendees and meeting goers may not recognize healthy food options as part of a company’s corporate social responsibility. Hospitality leaders such as The National Conference Center participate in “Food for Thought,” a program in which meal and snack options are given a hard consideration before serving. Similar to starting your day with a balanced breakfast, certain foods are believed to help your brain absorb the most information – making the most productive meeting possible.

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What are Food for Thought items?

• Fruits, vegetables, and snacks that are known for increasing blood flow, cognitive memory, and alertness – also known as a healthy afternoon boost and a meeting planner’s dream.

How is Food for Thought done?

• By sourcing the best products from local vendors, conference centers can ensure they’re receiving foods with the most nutritional value.

• Once you receive the product, it’s about how you treat the product, if you’re taking care of it, and how you’re storing it.

• If the item requires further preparation, cooking for shorter periods of time allows the vegetable or fruit to maintain the most nutrients possible.

What results do guests see?

• Prior to the program, guests felt afternoon fatigue and sleepy during their meetings. Now with food for thought, guests maintain a mid to high energy level based on the lunch meals and break station snack options.

To learn more about food for thought, The National Conference Center’s Executive Chef Craig Mason shares food for thought tips, recipes, and more on the Conference Center Blog.


Written By:
Sarah Vining
Marketing Assistant
The National Conference Center

Green Ideas from the Emory Conference Center

Emory Conference Center was recently named Atlanta's first LEED-certified conference center hotel.  Recent articles about the center's success listed off a few green and CSR ideas that you may also be able to implement at your own property!

As listed in the article by Hotel News Resource: 

• Supplying kitchen oil to Emory University's shuttle bus service to reuse as biodiesel
• Using single stream recycling processes, "where paper fibers are comingled, allowing an increase in the amount of materials recycled."
• Sending partially or unused soap samples (from guest rooms) to Haiti as part of a hygiene-focused group called Clean the World
• Giving partially used shampoo and conditioner samples to a local church

Do any readers have new or additional ideas to add to this list?

Corporate Social Responsibility....A New Emerging Trend Series

Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR. You’ve heard the acronym before, but do you really understand what it encompasses? This was a hot topic at the most recent IACC-Americas Board of Directors meeting as it may be the next large trend meeting planners and conference centers will face.

Before you start questioning what CSR is, whether it is worth your time, and how you may handle new requirements set by clients, take a step back. Chances are you are already doing many things that fall underneath the large umbrella of CSR.

According to a CSR Trends 2010 report created by Craib Design & Communications and Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP, Corporate Social Responsibility is, “A company’s commitment to operating in a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable manner, while recognizing the interests of its stakeholders.”

An easier way to think of it is as the triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.

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If you implemented reuse/recycling programs at your conference center or requested them in RFPs, you participated in CSR. If you spent a day volunteering at a local community center with your co-workers, you participated in CSR. The challenge coming to the industry is how to expand these practices at conference centers in order to benefit stakeholders, and how to show potential customers that you provide exceptional CSR opportunities they can work into their meeting schedule.

While we have not measured how strong this trend is for our industry, Corporate Social Responsibility does seem to be gaining traction as a global business standard even in these tough economic times. The Craib study found that “addressing issues the once took a back seat to financial results… has become critical to a company’s credibility, transparency and endurance.” Of the 423 companies surveyed, 81% provide information on CSR on their website. 28% of companies utilize social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter to relay their CSR message, and 28% maintain company blogs. This shows that communicating activities about CSR is just as important as being socially responsible.

Due to the complex nature of this topic, the Emerging Trends Committee will spend a month discussing CSR. Committee members will give personal examples of what CSR systems are in action in their workplace, give ideas of how to incorporate new practices in your conference center, and discuss what steps IACC is taking to promote CSR throughout its membership. We will also consider ways to communicate these opportunities to clients and the world. What can we do to improve that triple bottom line? Stay tuned…

For more information on the Craib study: CSR Trends 2010, visit: http://admin.csrwire.com/system/report_pdfs/1189/original/CSR_TRENDS_2010.pdf


Written by:
Kasey Snyder and Meghan Bollenback