Throughout the Winter 2025 semester, the McGill Food Coalition (MFC) has posted a weekly calendar compiling food service events on campus, from free lunches to events discussing food sustainability. MFC is a student-run group that represents and coordinates projects between food advocacy groups, including the Student Nutrition Accessibility Club (SNAC), Midnight Kitchen, and Happy Belly.
In an interview with The Tribune, Mia Szabo, U3 Arts and a project leader for the MFC, explained that the calendar seeks to improve students’ access to nutritious, affordable, and sustainable foods. She added that by compiling the services of its member groups, the calendar enables students to more easily incorporate them into weekly meal planning.
“On Monday, I can get SNAC groceries,” Szabo said. “On Wednesday, I can go to Midnight Kitchen. On Friday, there’s Happy Belly, and in between, there’s workshops.”
Szabo also drew attention to the symbolic significance of the calendar in showing that student food advocacy groups are united in their efforts to combat food insecurity.
“We really want to convey a sense of cohesiveness across the different groups, which in the past, might not even know that each other existed,” Szabo said. “We’re all working towards a common goal, which is servicing McGill students and the McGill community.”
Szabo emphasized that the calendar contributes to MFC’s larger commitment to creating an alternative food system on campus, filling gaps left by the traditional food system centred upon for-profit companies.
Élèves des Champs—a student-run ecological garden on the Macdonald Campus—is among the member groups of MFC. Reflecting on the MFC’s work beyond the calendar, Sam Liptay, U3 Science and representative from Élèves des Champs, echoed the coalition’s role in tackling food insecurity holistically and addressing common obstacles between student groups.
“Something that people [have been asking] is, ‘What are the limits to growth for each group?’, and trying to assess those and see if this can be overcome, and see if there [are] commonalities,” Liptay said.
For Jeanne Arnould, U4 Arts and a representative from DefaultVeg McGill, MFC is a key way to increase the visibility of food advocacy groups for students, something that is crucial given that it can be challenging to find an updated list of active clubs and services on campus. DefaultVeg promotes plant-based eating through catering services and other food sustainability events, such as vegan snack nights.
“When you do have a club, you need to go table at Activities Night and hope that some people will be interested, otherwise your student club or group kind of dies,” Arnould told The Tribune. “So [MFC’s] initiative to actually structure [these groups under a coalition] is really, really valuable.”
In a written statement, Hugo-Victor Solomon, Vice-President External of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), noted that rising inflation and the lack of food options on campus are among the main drivers of food insecurity for students. However, Solomon believes that SSMU signing a new Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with McGill on Feb. 28 may help bring more food venues to the University Centre.
“I’m happy to say that given the signing of the new 5-year MoA, […] it’ll be a lot easier to secure contractors in a more streamlined process through having a management agreement with the University in place—and to get more food service tenants in the building ASAP,” Solomon wrote.
Although Solomon reported that SSMU is not currently collaborating with MFC “in any official capacity,” he wrote that the student union will seek to work with them to revise SSMU’s Food Security Policy in the future.
Lia Boretsky, U4 Science and co-president of SNAC, hopes to see greater collaboration between student groups under MFC and underscored the mutual benefit that comes from this work. Boretsky recalled several weeks when SNAC was able to prevent wasting leftover produce from their weekly Good Food Box distribution service by offering it to Midnight Kitchen for their lunch program.
“It’s more effective when we work together and collaborate, rather than just being our own [groups], because then things go to waste,” Boretsky said. “We all have the same mission, and if we come together and be more strategic […] it’s going to have a better result for the students.”
