Living Lab: Restaurant Focused Greenhouse Gas Reduction Research Project
Join Stephen Thomson and Nicole Detlor, researchers at Conestoga College as they discuss their on-going research project funded by Colleges and Institutes Canada to create a Living Lab focused on reducing Restaurant Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions. The Bloom Kitchen at the Waterloo Campus of Conestoga College is a full-service teaching restaurant, serving 300 students, faculty, and the local community daily. The Living Lab will use this highly visible and interactive venue to demonstrate the impact of food, waste, and packaging choices on GHG through a simplified rating system. To date our team has developed a model to calculate GHG based on ingredient, recipe, and plate choices. Using the GHG data as a new quality parameter, chefs at Bloom kitchen will create the winter 2023 menu. Food waste will be audited during the fall semester and strategies for reduction will be shared with the restaurant team with the goal of reduction. Our research will investigate the impact of providing GHG information alongside menu items on consumer purchasing behaviour. Based on the collected data, our team will develop a GHG informed menu development process that incorporates packaging considerations, targeting an overall reduction in GHG resulting from the Bloom Kitchen menu.
Our Speakers:
Nicole Detlor, Director, Food Research & Innovation, Conestoga College
Bio:
Nicole Detlor is the of Director, Food Research and Innovation at Conestoga College. She has a leadership role in cultivating new and existing relationships between the food industry and Conestoga College. Nicole has 20 years of technical and leadership experience in new product development, innovation, quality assurance and regulatory affairs in the food industry. She has a breadth of industry experience in bakery, meat and thermal processing across retail, food service and ingredient sectors. Nicole holds a Master of Science degree in Biological Engineering from University of Guelph, is a licenced Professional Engineer and a member of CIFST.
Stephen Thomson, Director of the Centre for Supply Chain Innovation (CSCI), Conestoga College
Bio:
Stephen Thomson is the Director of the Centre for Supply Chain Innovation (CSCI) (formerly known as the Magna Centre for Supply Chain Excellence) @ Conestoga College. Prior to becoming the director of CSCI, Stephen was a 15 year veteran of the Supply Chain cluster of programs. Stephen has designed and taught courses at the diploma, degree, and post-graduate level program, specializing in data analytics, data visualization, and decision support modeling. Stephen is also the college’s SAP faculty lead assisting programs integrate the topics of ERP systems, business processes, simulation games, and advanced analytics into curriculum.
Over the past three years, Stephen has been a primary investigator in applied research participating in multi-disciplinary teams focusing on projects related to the Digital Secure Supply Chain. Research topics have included projects related to logistics visualizations, predictive analytics, and the development of a sustainability scorecard framework.
Prior to joining Conestoga College, Stephen had a successful career in various leadership roles within information technology and supply chain management. For 20 years Stephen worked with companies within the consumer goods and automotive manufacturing industries; bringing data to life by creating analytics solutions such as informative dashboards, scorecards, and visualizations that contributed to improved operational performance.
Event Details:
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
12:00 - 12:45 p.m. EST
Through Zoom Webinar platform
