Working to catalyze change in the food system
The Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation is an operating foundation whose mission is to educate consumers, institutional purchasers and culinarians about how their food choices affect the global environment, local economies, and the quantity and quality of healthy food, now and for future generations, and to activate them to make change. Our goal is no less than transforming the purchasing practices of the food services industry – and changing the underlying dynamics of the food web.
In 2005, the Foundation’s first year of operation, we used a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to host The Save Seafood Tour in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program. We made presentations to more than 1,000 Bon Appétit guests and 400 Bon Appétit kitchen staffers at 20 locations about seafood choices and their connection to maintaining healthy oceans. The Making Waves Project followed, which was an effort to encourage other food companies to change their seafood buying practices and to be consistent with internationally-recognized conservation standards. We’re proud to say that as a result of our work, a resolution was adopted by the board of our parent company, Compass Group, in November 2005 to phase-in new purchasing standards for seafood. This will result in a change of purchasing practices that will affect a minimum of one million pounds of seafood each year. In 2006, we shared operational knowledge about sustainable seafood with over 1,000 chefs from other Compass-owned companies and trained them about culinary alternatives to popular varieties of fish. They are now implementing these ideas in their own creative ways.
Next, the Foundation took on the connection between the food system and climate change. A year and a half in development, we launched a three-year program in April 2007 called the Low Carbon Diet. The program consists of 20 procurement and training initiatives that aim to reduce Bon Appétit Management Company’s carbon impact. These include substantially reducing the amount of beef and cheese we serve, radically reducing food waste, sourcing all produce, meats and bottled waters from North America (and as locally as possible), eliminating air-freighting of seafood to our accounts and promoting greater appreciation for “low on the food chain” species, along with other equipment and operational conservation measures. Our goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with our operations by 25% in the major categories over three years.
In addition to educating Bon Appétit’s staff about climate change, we worked with independent scientists to create an interactive online calculator at www.eatlowcarbon.org to help the public calculate the global warming potential (GWP) of their daily food choices.
The Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation is organized as a nonprofit California public benefit corporation and is only partly funded by the Company. We have been awarded tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 public benefit corporation and can accept individual and corporate donations. Alternatively, a donor may contribute to our mission by supporting one of our tax-exempt partners and designating funds for specific projects. For more information, please contact Helene York at helene.york@bamcf.org or (650) 798-8061.
