Dining Services will donate one percent of profits from food sales at the Commons this week to an organization dedicated to providing food to hungry children across the United States.
From yesterday through Sunday, the Commons Deli and Grill, located in the campus center, is participating in Share Our Strength's Great American Dine Out. The week-long national initiative has restaurants donate a fraction of their profits as a way of encouraging customers to eat out and donate to charity.
Share Our Strength, an organization that works with the culinary industry to eradicate childhood hunger in America, hopes to make the Great American Dine Out an annual event. "We are in striking distance of ending childhood hunger by institutionalizing what we know has worked, and by joining forces together we can make this vision a reality," Billy Shore, the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength, said in a press release.
Tufts' Director of Dining Services Patti Klos told the Daily that her office heard about the initiative through the National Restaurant Association, of which it is a member.
"Some of our managers noticed that this was taking place and brought it to our attention, and we thought it would be a good activity for us to be involved in," Klos said. "It seems to tie into things that the university cares about — being an active citizen."
While she did not have exact statistics, Klos said that one percent of the Commons' weekly profit would "most likely" amount to a few hundred dollars for Share Our Strength.
Dining Services has been promoting the effort with flyers and an announcement on its Web site. Klos said that her office would soon hang a sign in the Commons to advertise the charity week. "We have a banner that we're having made, and I hope that people will see that [and] say, ‘Oh that's cool, I'd like to buy something in support of that,'" she said.
Gargoyles on the Square, an upscale Davis Square restaurant, will also participate in the Great American Dine Out this week.
