Bulldog Bites, the opt-in communications channel available on Mobile@FresnoState app, aims to reduce food waste on campus by offering students a way to be notified of any opportunities to receive free food from catered events.
Groups and organizations hosting an event on campus can post on the channel, and then students will be notified of where to locate them.
According to Technology Services, 701 devices are subscribed to the Bulldog Bites channel, making it the most subscribed-to channel on the Mobile@FresnoState app.
The channel was previously known as the Catered Cupboard, but stopped its notifications due to safety concerns when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, said Feng Teter, primary coordinator of Bulldog Bites.
“When I got my current job back in September 2023, I started asking around to understand why the campus wasn’t notifying students about catering leftovers anymore, especially since masks were no longer required on campus,” Teter said in an email to The Collegian. “It didn’t seem there was any real reason – staff just said it would be additional work and no one really had the time to make it happen.”
Now, Teter is working to make the channel more efficient, with help from the Amendola Family Student Cupboard and Technology Services, which oversees the Mobile@FresnoState app.
Along with providing students with food at no cost, Teter believes the channel could help the university save a little bit of money over time.
“The less food that ends up in a trash can, the less [the] campus has to pay to have that hauled away,” Teter said. “Little by little, these savings build up over time.”
Teter also believes Bulldog Bites’ benefits can go beyond campus and into the surrounding community, as California passed Senate Bill 1383 in 2016 to eliminate food waste from landfills due to the impacts food waste can have on the climate.
Considering the Bulldog Bites channel has no official webpage on Fresno State’s website just yet, Teter has thought of other ways to promote the channel on campus.
These efforts have varied from posting physical and digital flyers around campus last year, asking departments to post flyers with instructions on how to subscribe to the channel on their social media pages and California Climate Action Corps Fellows doing face-to-face outreach during campus events.
“The process of getting this channel back up and running was very much a ‘build the plane while it’s flying’ situation – meaning that we didn’t want to delay getting food to students in order to develop a comprehensive marketing plan,” Teter said. “Because of this, and the fact that this was more of a labor of love, the channel is still actively in development.”
Anyone with questions or suggestions about Bulldog Bites is encouraged to email Teter directly at [email protected].
