WHO ARE WE?

The CUNY Campaign for Healthy Food (CHeF) is an initiative of Healthy CUNY established in 2011 to make CUNY the healthiest urban public university in the country. The initiative was designed to improve healthy food choices in CUNY cafeterias, vending machines and meetings; reduce consumption of soda and other sugar sweeted beverages (SSBs); and educate CUNY on diet-related health conditions and opportunities for physical activity.​

CUNY CHeF continues its mission as a growing coalition of students, researchers, faculty, and staff advocating for a sustainable, healthy, and just food environment across the CUNY system.

WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

In 2011, CUNY CHeF proposed a policy plan aimed to position the university as a leader in reducing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). Despite these recommendations put forth, CUNY moved to sign a 10-year pouring rights contract with PepsiCo. In exchange, PepsiCo agreed to pay CUNY $21 million for the exclusive rights to sell and market their beverages across all 25 CUNY campuses.​

With the pouring rights contract set to expire in 2023, CUNY CHeF launched their Pouring Rights Campaign an effort to urge the university NOT to renew the contract with PepsiCo and instead seek out healthier and more sustainable alternatives. ​

Adopting new food policies and seeking other vendors that prioritize health and sustainability within their business model, would allow CUNY to design a progressive campus food environment where healthy choices are easy choices, offering students, faculty, and staff potential lifetime protection against diet-related health conditions, and fulfilling CUNY’s mission of contributing to a better, healthier, more sustainable New York. ​

WHY SHOULD CUNY CARE ABOUT FOOD?

CUNY’s mission as a university is to provide a public first-rate education to all students, regardless of means or background. Ensuring quality education, however, is not confined to the classroom, but also considers meeting students’ essential needs that could impact their learning, such as rent burden, insurance coverage, transportation access, and most importantly food security. Nutrition and diet are closely associated with academic success- indicating that a healthy campus food environment can impact students’ learning ability.

Students spend a lot of time on campus, making it a second home where they spend a majority of their day. CUNY is responsible for creating a campus food environment that protects its students from unhealthy food access and predatory marketing— which is already prevalent in the neighborhoods they live in. A majority of CUNY students come from low-income backgrounds and have reported experiencing food insecurity. Campus should be an oasis for students where the healthy choice is the easy choice. If CUNY invests in improving it’s food environment, it is essentially also investing in it’s students’ academic success.

WHY is CUNY CHEF ADVOCATING to END THE POURING RIGHTS CONTRACT?

In 2013, CUNY signed a 10-year pouring rights contract with PepsiCo. PepsiCo agreed to pay the university $21-million in exchange for the exclusive rights to sell and market their products across all 25 CUNY campuses— ensuring Pepsi as CUNY’s official soft drink.

The contract makes CUNY a corporate partner in the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) at the expense of their student, faculty, and staff’s health, along with negative consequences to the environment. Promoting SSBs conflicts with the school’s inherent responsibility to serve the public good. A pouring rights contract with PepsiCo violates and goes against CUNY’s values of:

• Health

• Environmental Sustainability

• Ethical Economics

• Democracy

WHAT’S A POTENTIAL TIMELINE?

In the SHORT TERM……

PHASE I – Listening and Providing Options

1. Create a working group or process for students, faculty, and staff

   • Have a voice in future food and beverage contracts and ensure they are informed by health, sustainability, and equity values; not only profit. 

2. Comply with NYC Food Standards (Beverage vending machines), which:    

   • Reduces SSB’s + empty calories 

   • Removes SSB marketing and only advertises water or seltzer 

   • Requires calorie information to be posted to allow for informed decision-making   

   • Reduces and eliminates single-use plastics considering the widespread use of plastic products has resulted in massive amounts of plastic waste  (Niyitanga et al.2021)    

3. Increase free tap water to decrease plastic use on campus

   • Purchase and install new water fountains or dispensers in high-volume areas, near beverage vending machines, etc. Update existing water stations to ensure working condition. 

   • Coordinate an educational campaign to promote water drinking

In the LONG TERM…

PHASE II – Eliminating Monopoly Power 

1. Phase out pouring rights.

   • As existing pouring rights contracts expire, campuses should replace these beverage vendors through the non-exclusive procurement of products from multiple beverage producers and vendors that compete on metrics aligning with their values of health, equity, and sustainability. 

2. Provide many different beverage options

   • Campuses should aim to create a competitive market of beverages of all types. This could also include a small selection of sugary sweetened beverages that are given no preferential treatment. Campuses could seek to replace revenues from pouring rights with modest “slotting fees” and advertising fees from all brands. 

3. Eliminate all bottled water products.

   • Dispensing technologies for still, sparkling and functional water from companies such as Bevi and Elkay have reached a stage where all or close to all bottled water can be eliminated from sale as pouring rights expire. 

PHASE III – A Bottle- and Can-free Future 

1. Eliminate other bottled and canned beverages.

   • The technology and supply chain for dispensing beverages of almost any type will be possible through reverse osmosis without heat and without denaturing the product. This includes juices, kombucha, coconut water, coffee, teas and more.

   • Campuses can develop business models that offer almost any beverage through a dispensing machine across the campus and eliminate the majority of bottled beverages. . CUNY does not own the vending machines, so investing in it’s own infrastructure would be allow for more flexibility.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. What is a “pouring rights contract”?

   A “pouring rights contract” is a contract between a corporation and an institution where the corporation gets exclusive rights to sell and market their products at that institution. In the CUNY contract with Pepsi, CUNY is paid to make 90% of their food and beverage options Pepsi products.  Pepsi also incentivizes sales of their products by offering financial rewards to CUNY when a minimum quantity of their products are sold, leading to unlimited advertising opportunities for Pepsi.

2. Why should CUNY not resign the pouring rights contract?

   Pepsi being the only provider of beverages to our campus doesn’t make sense. CUNY just committed to ending the use of single use plastics. Meanwhile, Pepsi is the #2 plastic polluter in the world! 

   It also makes us nervous; Pepsi has been proven to use predatory marketing to increase consumption of sugary beverages in vulnerable communities, like low-income and working class communities of color. 

   In fact, Pepsi advertises their most unhealthy, sugariest, and addictive products to communities who have less access to fresh and healthy food and drinks. CUNY prides itself on being a place where people of all backgrounds and classes can get an education and work, yet is financially incentivized to sell more Pepsi products. How can we trust Pepsi to not take advantage of their monopoly on CUNY’s diverse community?

3. Why is this a health concern?

   Sustained consumption of sugar sweetened beverages can do everything from increase your risk of heart disease, to raise your blood pressure, to weaken your teeth, and even damage your liver. While everyone has the right to drink what they want, pouring rights contracts incentive universities to promote unhealthy beverages on campus, instead of making the healthy choice the easy choice.

4. Why would CUNY sign a PRC?

   In short, money! In 2013, CUNY signed a 10 year agreement with Pepsi that gives the company the exclusive rights to stock vending machines and cafeterias in exchange for a $21 million payment to CUNY. Pepsi also financially rewards CUNY for certain minimum amounts of their profits sold. 

5. Where do the millions of dollars Pepsi pays CUNY go?

   It’s not exactly clear. Administration hasn’t responded to many questions, and the documents that would answer that question aren’t public. What we do know is that the Pepsi funds are flexible funds, so CUNY administration can use it however they want. Our campaign asks for more transparency and accountability regarding the money that comes with risks to our campus community’s health and sustainability. 

6. What is the alternative to Pepsi on campus? 

   If CUNY were to end the pouring rights contract with Pepsi, it has an opportunity to work with local businesses, both community and student led, to bring healthier options to our schools. These businesses could be Minority and Women-owned Businesses (M/WBE).

7. Why am I only hearing about this now? 

   Since CUNY signed a 10 year contract in 2013, the contract is up for renewal this year, 2023. A lot is unknown about the contract negotiation process, and CUNY administration has not been transparent in providing information after repeated requests. This is why we are campaigning to #pouroutpepsi and influence future food and beverage contracts. As a coalition of CUNY students, faculty, and staff, we are hope you join us!

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?

Please visit our resources folder to find more articles related to pouring rights contract and it’s harmful impact on communities and our environment.