Bon Appétit Management Company

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”Well, a few students at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, CA, got lemons and went way beyond lemonade to create desserts, sandwiches, salads, and more.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Larga Vista Ranch in Boone, Colorado along with some of the Bon Appétit team from Colorado College. Doug Wiley, who owns Larga Vista Ranch along with his wife Kim, is one of those passionate, charismatic people that I could listen to all day. A fourth-generation farmer working land that has been in his family for 95 years, he is well versed in everything from the benefits of raw milk to climate change and food safety.

Composting food scraps from kitchen prep is a no brainer — an easy way to recycle soil fertility. But recycling the scrapings from diners’ plates is another story. That’s why Bon Appétit at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH, invested in a Somat Pulper, a system that grinds both pre and post-consumer food so it can be sent to a Class Two licensed municipal facility to become compost.

Mother-son team Elizabeth MacAlister and Mark Gillman run Cato Corner Farm — a small, pasture-based, and family-owned cheese operation in Colchester, CT.

For this month’s Well Being Challenge, we encourage you to eat at least seven servings of fruits and vegetables and two servings of whole grains every day for one week. Visit cafebonappetit.com for resources to help determine what is a standard serving of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Share your experiences by posting comments or photos of foods in proper portions on our Facebook page wall. Here’s a recipe to get you started.

Located in the heart of ranching country, Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, is proud to support the work of grass-based ranchers like Cheryl and Robert Cosner of Upper Dry Creek Ranch.

Last fall I had the pleasure of traveling to beautiful Colombia to visit the birthplace of the delicious Fair Trade Certified™ Cordillera chocolate with which Bon Appétit Management Company chefs bake. Now that I’ve gone over the basics in my first post and told you all about farming cacao in my second, I can now talk about the social responsibility aspect of the business.

Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, CA, is located just north of some of the richest coastal farmland in California, on which grows a variety of crops from lettuces, to artichokes, to strawberries. Marketing Manager Melissa Reynen, student garden volunteer and Bon Appétit student employee Danny Paikoff, and local photographer Greg Wight decided to head out on a combination fact-finding mission and photo safari to three of the coastal farms that supply SCU, in order to gather photos and stories to share with the SCU community.

At the crack of dawn one Saturday morning, a group of Gallaudet University students visited Even’ Star Organic Farm, a longtime Farm to Fork partner of Bon Appétit Management Company, to learn about where exactly their food comes from.

For this month’s Well Being Challenge, we encourage you to eat at least seven servings of fruits and vegetables and two servings of whole grains every dayfor one week. Visit cafebonappetit.com for resources to help determine what is a standard serving of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Share your experiences by posting comments or photos of foods in proper portions on our Facebook page wall. Here’s a recipe to get you started.