Jeff Thurston has been at this for a while. Compass and Bon Appétit Management Company’s 2024 Chef of the Year has been working in restaurants since he was a teenager growing up in Toronto. It didn’t take long for the energy of restaurants to grab hold of Jeff. Over 30 years later, he still thrives off the action in the back of the house and the buzz of guests in the front of the house.
From Our Blog
Farm to Fork Profile: Bon Appétit and The Common Market: The Story of an Ever-Expanding Partnership
In 2010, the Bon Appétit Management Company team at the University of Pennsylvania struck up a partnership with The Common Market, a new non-profit organization dedicated to building sustainable and equitable local food systems. Nearly 15 years later, Bon Appétit and The Common Market have grown together, with Bon Appétit-served colleges, universities, cultural institutions, and corporate headquarters sourcing from The Common Market in Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, and beyond. Here’s the story of how the partnership, centered around shared values, grew from one metro region on the East Coast to span half of the United States.
Farm to Fork Profile: Stewarding Special Land, Making Special Cheese at Point Reyes
The cows of our Farm to Fork partners at Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company have a pretty awesome view. Situated at the southern tip of Tomales Bay in Marin County, California, the farm’s residents look out over the long, narrow bay to the Point Reyes peninsula, one of the most ecologically diverse (and breathtakingly beautiful) places in the country.
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Leading By Example
Bon Appétit Management Company is an on-site restaurant company offering full food-service management to corporations, universities, museums, and other specialty venues. Based in Palo Alto, CA, we operate more than 1,000 cafés in 33 states. Our chefs cook from scratch, including sauces, stocks, and soups. Widely recognized as a pioneer in environmentally sound sourcing policies, we are proud to be the first food service company to:
Directly support small, local farms- Strive to serve only sustainable seafood
- Address antibiotics overuse in our meat supply
- Switch to cage-free eggs, both shell and precracked/liquid
- Tackle food’s role in climate change
- Advocate for farmworkers’ rights
- Commit to pork raised without gestation crates
- Switch to third-party verified humanely raised ground beef
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Our team at Oxford College at Emory University sure know how to throw a back-to-school bash 🥳
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Our team at Oxford College at Emory University sure know how to throw a back-to-school bash 🥳
#LoveBonAppetit #OxfordDining #StudentLife #CampusEats
Introducing our 2024 Chef of The Year Jeff Thurston! 👏
Jeff has been working in restaurants for over 30 years (since he was a teenager in Toronto!) and still thrives off the energy of the back of the house and buzz of guests. As he advanced, working extensively with Wolfgang Puck, he “learned how to move in the kitchen, and learned the sense of urgency you need to make dinner service happen.”
Now at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, Jeff oversees a team of 150 and an operation that includes a four-station café, a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Court Café, and the newly renovated and re-opened Rose Garden Tea Room.
He’s a hands-on leader, cooking, expediting, and teaching his staff everything from culinary techniques to resiliency in the kitchen. He strives to maintain a work environment that empowers his team to make decisions and solve problems within a positive, upbeat atmosphere.
Learn more about our 2024 Chef of The Year at the link in our bio! #ChefLife #RestaurantLife #FineDining #ChefOfTheYear #ChefAppreciationWeek #HumansOfBAMCO #LoveBonAppetit
We've pledged to source all of our coffee-bean purchases either from a third-party-certified/-verified source or from vendors enrolled in our Farm to Fork local-sourcing program through the Sustainable Coffee Challenge.
What does that look like in practice? Supporting small roasters like @cartecoffee in Walla Walla, Washington. Our @bonappetitwhitman team proudly serves Carte Coffee, a newly enrolled Farm to Fork vendor, at Reid Market.
📸: @kaitlinmoor.photo #FarmToFork #SupportLocal #SustainableCoffee #SustainableCoffeeChallenge
Most Recent News
California’s Food Recovery Program is the First of its Kind in the US
In the first three months of 2024, Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO) cafes in California donated 65,596 pounds of food. As a food service provider for more than a thousand universities and corporate campuses across the US, BAMCO first began a food recovery program in 2015.
Chase Center’s first lady of flavors
Kristela Nazario-Mendoza is a proud Filipino-American. Her journey to becoming Chase Center’s culinary director began in the Philippines, in fact, and is both inspiring and aspirational.
New restaurant in Menlo Park pays homage to old Silicon Valley
A new restaurant called Sand Hill Sundeck has opened at 3000 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. The restaurant, which opened on July 7, is located within the Sand Hill Collection, a 48-acre indoor-outdoor workspace poised at the top of Sand Hill Road.
Join Us
We’re always looking for great people to join our teams! If you:
- Get excited when fresh, local produce arrives on your loading dock
- Enjoy creating all-new dishes from scratch
- Love interacting with people through delicious and nutritious food
- Thrive when part of a close-knit team that takes your and others’ safety seriously
- Enjoy helping people reach their full potential, nourishing them through at-work learning opportunities
Then you may be a fit for us!