The Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) collaborative was founded in 2013 to figure out how Bay Area anchor institutions like hospitals could aggregate their purchasing power to transform the health, wealth and climate resilience of the East Bay. Over the years, that work evolved to address challenges presented by large-scale food procurement.
And that process now has a home: the Union City Culinary Center, which opened this January about 20 miles south of Oakland.
The center is a large-scale food production facility vendors supply raw ingredients, and the facility produces up to 50,000 meals daily for distribution to hospitals, schools, universities and retail customers throughout Northern California. It’s the result of years of collaboration between ARC, the center’s owner and operator FoodService Partners, and anchor institution Kaiser Permanente, which has a goal to purchase 100 percent sustainable and local food by 2025.