Bon Appétit Management Company

The final event of last spring’s Your Food Chain series at Santa Clara University ended with the theme of strawberries. I had the honor of speaking alongside strawberry farmer Irma Mendoza. When Irma was 17, she left Mexico for the United States and naturally sought out a farm job. She started out harvesting strawberries, but her experiences growing in California were different from growing up in Mexico. The biggest difference being that the berries were grown with extremely toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

A month or two ago, the Shepherd’s Grain farmers were just finishing their harvest, climbing off their combines after a long season. This year in the Pacific Northwest, we may have had a disappointing late spring and mild summer for beach-goers, but it was just cool and rainy enough to pamper the wheat fields. And a high yielding season is not only great for the farmers, but also for all of us. Our relationship is not bran deep. Bon Appétit Management Company throughout the Pacific Northwest partners with Shepherd’s Grain to create our from-scratch pizza dough, bread, and pastries. Bon Appétit at Seattle University, for example, goes through 1,550 pounds of Shepherd’s Grain flour a week to feed lunch-going students, faculty, and staff!

More than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California have come together to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene through the exhibition Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. The Bon Appétit team at the Getty Center in Los Angeles had the creative pleasure of catering the show’s opening celebration, which was attended by 1,500 artists, cultural and civic leaders, and area residents.

With such student organizations as Farm Club, a brand-new cooking student organization headed by young Swedish chef Vayu Maini Rekdal, and Food Truth, considered the most active group on campus, it’s no wonder Carleton College students flocked to compete in the campus’s first annual Sustainable Iron Chef Competition, hosted by Bon Appétit Management Company in honor of the first national annual Food Day. Cooked up by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day is a movement for “real food” across the country.

Bon Appétit at Goucher College kicked off November with a new tradition for the campus: Iron Chef, college style. Representatives from each of the four classes—freshmen through seniors—were tasked with creating a delicious meal in a limited time frame not only for a panel of discerning judges, but for the entire café… during the dinner rush. That meant cooking not just for three or four, but for hundreds. Adding a whole new element to the competition, this certainly left the student competitors an appreciation of what kitchen staffs in college dining halls do three times a day, every day!

In certain circles, some farmers are as famous as rock stars. Bon Appétit Farm to Fork partner Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood, CA, is one of them. Renowned Berkeley, CA, restaurateur Alice Waters has been known to serve his O’Henry peaches, Rainier cherries, Goldensweet apricots, and Warren pears unadorned for dessert at Chez Panisse. To learn why, I organized a tour of Al’s farm along with a group of 50 faculty members, staff, students, and Bon Appétit Sous Chef Cheylin Hale from Mills College in Oakland, CA.

How do you get a plugged-in, tweeting, Facebooking generation interested and involved in sustainable farming? University of Redlands in Redlands, CA, found an answer this year for Low Carbon Diet Day– appeal to their inner techie.

Redlands in California’s San Bernardino Valley has a rich agricultural heritage, having once been one of the area’s largest producers of citrus crops. The Redlands Conservancy seeks to preserve both the agricultural land and its heritage – goals Bon Appétit is proud to support.

For a special fundraiser for the Seattle Art Museum on Friday, November 4, Bon Appétit’s TASTE Restaurant team worked with internationally renowned chef Mario Batali. Projected to raise $300,000 for the Seattle Art Museum, this extraordinary epicurean event featured a family-style dinner with Batali as well as a panel discussion among Batali; Thierry Rautureau, The Chef in the Hat™; and Steve Pool of KOMO News. Guests enjoyed signature Batali dinner platters, hors d’oeuvres, and desserts. TASTE’s menu was designed to bring Batali back to the Northwest, where he grew up, drawing ingredients from farms close by.

On October 17, 2011, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Research Helene York delivered the keynote at the State of the Plate conference in Washington, DC, an event designed to bring meat producers and the culinary community together to engage in discussion about sustainable and humane meat production practices.