LUNENBURG, Mass From Macintosh, Cortland, and Red Delicious to Golden Delicious, Macoun, and Honeycrisp, it's apple picking time at Lanni Orchards, a third generation family farm in Lunenburg, Massachusetts and part of the Sodexo network of local sourcing for fresh produce.

This month Sodexo and a number of the companys area clients were hosted at Lanni Orchards for a harvest lunch featuring a menu of local ingredients emphasizing a shared commitment to local sourcing and sustainability.

The harvest lunch included warm pumpkin bisque served in a roasted mini sugar pumpkin and hot apple cider, grilled eggplant with local grape and grilled corn salsa, and roasted butternut squash salad atop sunflower shoots in an eco container.

Sodexo supports the communities in which we do business, as well as providing fresher products through the purchase of locally grown foods, said Rush Sherman, Vice President of Operations for Sodexo Campus Services. We are honored to showcase a key member of our local farm network that supplies our operations with fresh and seasonal produce.

The event at Lanni Orchards included a tour of the apple farm and a behind-the-scenes look at the processing of the apples after harvest. The farmgrows over 100 acres of apples, nearly 80 acres in vegetable land, and operates a farm stand located on Rt. 13 in Lunenburg, Mass.

From a local sourcing perspective, Sodexo works with 6,000 businesses and a network of more than 600 farmers across the country. In most of the kitchens Sodexo operates across North America, more than half of the produce served in-season is locally grown.

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