Bon Appétit Management Company

Small, organic farms and bikes attract the same sort of fans, it appears — both are undeterred by inclement weather. Despite chilly rain, over a hundred students and community members came together for a bicycle-powered celebration of local farms, the second annual Farm Bike Tour, in Northfield, MN,

he Daily Meal’s 2013 list of the 60 Best Colleges for Food in America is out — and Bon Appétit Management Company operates 13 of them! These are schools that “refuse to accept the stigma that comes with collegiate dining, taking the ordinary campus meal and turning it into an extraordinary dining experience.”

Congratulations to the Bon Appétit Management Company team at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, which has achieved gold certification from the City of Portland’s Sustainability at Work program, recognizing its leadership in helping make Portland one of the cleanest, most sustainable cities in the country.

The students have spoken — all 126,000 of them! And according to the Princeton Review’s surveys, four of the 12 campuses with the Best College Food are operated by Bon Appétit Management Company! Congrats to our teams at Wheaton College, St. Olaf, Wash U, and Claremont McKenna.

Bon Appétit General Manager Katie McKenna opened the doors to the Carleton East dining hall, where local middle school students embarked on a from-scratch pizza adventure taught by Sous Chef Gibson Price. The class included a fair amount of dough throwing (the approved kind) but also more serious topics, including tours of the full-scale industrial kitchen, a visit to the bakers (who offered delicious granola bars), and fruitful conversations about college life.

The Bon Appétit Fellows are gearing up for the start of the school year and thanks to our partnership with the Food Recovery Network (FRN) we have some exciting new programs to look forward to.

Ronnybrook Farm Dairy invites all of their customers to visit their picturesque farm in the heart of the Hudson Valley. Bon Appétit chefs at Wesleyan University in Middleton, CT, who buy milk, yogurt and frozen yogurt from Ronnybrook, decided to take them up on the offer, and bring along a group of Wesleyan students studying environmental science.

As a food service company, one of the joys of working directly with college students is helping to instill a healthy eating mindset in young people who are living independently for the first time. But reaching kids at even younger ages can be helpful in preventing bad habits from really taking hold.

If asked, few people might say turnips were on their Top 10 list, but mash them like potatoes with butter and milk, and what guest would turn them down? And many shy away from other lesser-known vegetables for fear of the unknown or lack of cooking knowledge, but chefs — especially lovers of local and seasonal — live for showing off many underserved vegetables and highlighting their best qualities.

Bon Appétit Management Company is proud to partner with its education clients to tackle many mutually important issues of sustainability, such as food waste and climate change. Now, with the graduation of the first recipient of a joint scholarship at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, it has added greater access to higher education to the list.