Bon Appétit Management Company

National Farmworker Awareness Week, hosted by the Student Action for Farmworkers (SAF) and cosponsored by Bon Appétit Management Company, is quickly approaching. March 24-31 is a week dedicated to raising awareness about farmworkers and the conditions they face as participants in a food system focused on keeping prices lower at any cost.

It’s not easy being green, as a certain frog once sang, and it’s even less easy getting your practices certified green. But that’s exactly the feat that BonAppétit at VMware in Palo Alto, CA, accomplished in February, when it became a Bay Area Certified Green Business.

Under the leadership of General Manager Stuart Leckie and Executive Chef Christian Bassett, the team at Saint Joseph’s takes what Bon Appétit requires nationwide in terms of social and environmental commitments (no small feat), and pushes each as far as they are able.

In the United States, 40% of food goes uneaten. Just so we’re clear, that’s nearly half. Yet one in every six Americans lacks a secure supply of food. Waste is happening at every part of the supply chain: thousands of pounds of fresh vegetables are being left in the fields to rot, blemished produce are being tossed at our supermarkets, restaurants are dumping perfectly good leftovers, and consumers are letting food waste away in their refrigerators. Clearly, we have a problem.

This Saturday, February 16, join thousands of “foodies,” “farmies,” and leaders in food and farming in watching the TEDxManhattan: Changing the Way We Eat conference. Bon Appétit is very honored that Maisie Greenawalt, our vice president of strategy, was selected to present. During the third session, Empower, which starts at 4pm EST, Maisie will speak frankly about “How the Humane Sausage Gets Made” — how a large corporation like Bon Appétit decides to tackle animal welfare issues, and what specific challenges we face in meeting our aggressive deadline of 2015 to end all purchases of pork raised without gestation crates.

Since I first heard it was possible, it has been a dream of mine to own a car that runs on waste vegetable oil — burning a resource widely regarded as trash. Starting last summer, I was finally able to make that dream a reality.

This Thursday, February 7, Bon Appétit Management Company Vice President Maisie Greenawalt will participate in a Tweetchat* with the organizers of the upcoming TEDxManhattan: Changing the Way We Eat conference. Tune into Twitter between 4-4:30pm EST/1-1:30pm PST and follow the hashtag #TEDxMan.

Bon Appétit believes that making a difference in the lives of others—one that pays dividends long past the holiday season — is the best gift we can give. This year’s beneficiary is the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA).

I knew I had to visit Pure Country Pork after learning it was the first sustainable hog operation in the United States to be certified by Food Alliance under its stricter guidelines of no farrowing crates or gestation stalls. Plus, since Bon Appétit committed last year to phasing out all pork raised using gestation crates by 2015, I knew I needed to talk to some experts to better understand the significance of this commitment.

The kitchen crew at Institute of American Indian Arts, in Santa Fe, NM, led by Executive Chef Guido Lambelet, took a trip out to Old Windmill Dairy to learn more about the great cheese they’ve been using in their kitchens — and to get a chance to make some of their own.