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. There’s no sense in spending anyone’s resources just to talk; we want to affect change. That’s why our goal for this organization is to transform the purchasing practices of the food services industry – and to change 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 run 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. This program led to the Making Waves Project, an effort to encourage other food companies to change their seafood buying practices and 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 Compass Group board in November 2005 to phase-in new purchasing standards fully within three years. 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 sister companies and trained them about culinary alternatives to popular varieties of fish. They are now implementing these ideas in their own creative ways.

What We’re Doing Now. A year and a half in development, the Foundation launched a three-year program in April 2007 called the Low Carbon Diet which is the first national program to highlight the connection between food and climate change. The program consists of 20 procurement and training initiatives that aim to reduce Bon Appétit’s carbon impact. These include radically reducing food waste, sourcing all produce, meats and bottled waters from domestic sources (and as locally as possible), eliminating air-freighting of seafood to our accounts and promoting greater appreciation for “low on the food chain” species, among other equipment and operational conservation measures. Our goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with our operations by 25% in the major categories. The company is implementing the program with strong support from the CEO and key corporate executives; the foundation is developing research, training materials, and an analytical tool for consumers to characterize and reduce their personal contributions to climate change by making more informed food choices.

Support Us. The Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation is organized as a nonprofit California mutual benefit corporation and is only partly funded by the Company. We have applied for 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.

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