As a large, regional distributor, Daylight Foods shapes the food supply chain of many institutions in California. Universities that have cut ties with large food service management companies like Aramark and Sodexo now work with Daylight to streamline procurement from regional vendors and farmers. Daylight has the opportunity to support the sustainability and ethical growth that many universities are striving for, yet the distributor has a pattern of being an obstacle instead of a collaborator.

For example, Daylight has not done right by the Alameda BIPOC farmers at Dig Deep Farms. Daylight has dragged their feet, “lost paperwork”, and failed to onboard Dig Deep Farms while universities like UC Berkeley and Stanford have been prepared to purchase from them. This failure has had impacts beyond just the loss of the sustaining contracts and funds, as it also has disrupted crop planning and kept the farmers uncertain of their status. Daylight has not shown diligence, nor acknowledged their mishandling of Dig Deep vendor onboarding according to sources involved in procurement conversations. This is where we come in! Writing this letter lets them know that they will be held accountable and that their actions are being watched.

Daylight Foods lacks transparency and accountability to the public, and to the students at the universities they serve. Their lack of effort to support smaller, local, BIPOC farms is a worrisome pattern. A public example of this is their misleading marketing, listing non-Black farmers at Full Belly Farms on their webpage as Black farms that Daylight supports! Full Belly had no idea Daylight was misrepresenting them, and there was absolutely no confusion as to whether their farm was white owned and operated. (Screenshot of their "BIPOC Partners" page before they edited it as a result of our messaging).

Daylight needs to be held to a higher standard! They need to join in our efforts to shift food systems towards sustainability, and equity, and towards support for local, BIPOC producers instead of being an obstacle to uplifting Black success in northern California!

The time has come for Daylight to Do Right! Tell them to support local, BIPOC farmers like Dig Deep Farms!