Bravo Solutions Stories: Never Say No and Other Best Practices for Running Commissary Kitchens
As Bon Appétit continues to grow alongside our corporate clients, commissary kitchens have become an important part of our operational toolkit. With companies expanding into new offices, opting for lighter real estate footprints, or managing hybrid office schedules, full-scale on-site kitchens aren’t always feasible or desired by clients — but expectations for fresh, high-quality food and customizable programs haven’t changed.
That’s where commissaries come in. These culinary hubs allow us to prepare, package, and deliver Bon Appétit’s culinary experience (in any number of configurations — hot food, grab-and-go, breakfast, snacking or coffee programs, baked goods — the list goes on) with efficiency. The model offers clear advantages: clients get access to our excellent food and service without the need for extensive kitchen infrastructure, sometimes at a savings. On our end, we benefit from increased scalability, streamlined production, controlled costs, and added growth opportunities for our people.
While off-site kitchens serving multiple clients help us grow thoughtfully and strategically, offering each client a multitude of options, translating Bon Appétit offerings from an on-site to a commissary model comes with a learning curve. “There’s nothing harder in our business,” than commissary work and its built-in challenges, says Regional Vice President Joseph Alfieri. We talked to some of our commissary operators to learn what it takes to build and run a successful commissary, and the best practices that set us up for success. Here’s what they shared:
Never say no…
…but use your expertise to find a workable solution. Managing unlimited inbound requests is part of the job for all operators, regardless of the type of account. “I always try and figure out a way to say yes,” to those requests, says Brian Anderson, a district manager in the Bay Area whose territory includes Custer Commissary in San Francisco. “Maybe not entirely, maybe I make an offer that’s part of the ask, but you can’t say no,” he says.
That’s the philosophy at Custer, he says. “You gotta stay open to new things. You’re going to put yourself in a difficult position, maybe, but that’s how you learn.” Custer, which opened in 2017 with one high-growth tech client, has grown to serve thousands of meals per day to eight clients and counting. Their openness to new ideas and offerings means the commissary now operates a coffee roasting program and manages break room offerings for clients who ask.
Adaptation and growth feed each other
By its nature, the commissary model is a flexible one that invites an iterative approach to growth. When Mark Raynor, executive chef at Elliott Bay Culinary in Seattle, joined the account in early 2020, it wasn’t long before they were reacting and responding to pandemic-related challenges. As the new frontier of hybrid work emerged, “we had to ask ourselves how we were going to rationalize being the stewards of this amazing facility,” he says. In addition to feeding the hybrid workforce, the team started using the Expedia space to produce grab-and-go meals for all the accounts in the region, many of which are satellite offices with a smaller population of workers and no on-site kitchen.
They built the cold grab-and-go program and added bakery in the first year, then took on a hot carry-in program for one social media company, then another — adding a new level of scale and complexity to the operation. The rapid growth has meant the team has had to constantly adapt and iterate, a process that comes with learning curves and growth opportunities, both of which Mark and his team have faced — and embraced. That growth mindset is crucial to success in a commissary, he says.
“A defining trait in this commissary world is adaptability and nimbleness, along with willingness and ability to throw something away as soon as it doesn’t work, and restart and rebuild,” says Mark. “We’re used to doing that in real time. We’ve turned our operation on its head so many times in the last three years that that’s just kind of old hat to us now,” he says.
10X communication is key
This constant adaptation means “there’s no road map for success in the commissary business,” says Regional Vice President Michael Aquaro, whose region is home to six commissaries serving 16 clients. The solve-as-you-go approach means that close communication is crucial.
Members of the Bakery 350 team hard at work at Custer (front to back): Bakery 350 Sous Chef Gabriel Nunez, Baker Angela Xiao, Baker Jerryl Smith.
On the client side, says Michael, “you can’t be afraid to share what you need in order to make the program successful.” Whether that’s more equipment or even a larger space to accommodate a growing program, clear and open channels of communication with clients is key to meeting the shared goal of delivering a meaningful and successful program.
Internally, communication is the glue that holds the kitchen and the logistics team together, says Alex Scover, director of operations at Custer. “If I’m working side by side with our culinary director,” Alex says, “he might see something I might not see and vice versa, so we just work in collaboration to make sure everything rolls in the right direction and that ultimately, the client is happy. That’s the crux of it.”
Make friends with creative culinary troubleshooting
“The most critical item in the commissary world is having the right menu,” says Michael Aquaro. While bakery items and cold grab-and-go sandwiches and salads are relatively straightforward, the challenge arises when programs expand to hot food that needs to stay hot and delicious on its trip to the site. At Elliott Bay, they send 1,000 hot boxed meals daily to one account for both lunch and dinner. They needed to not only find the right equipment for that undertaking, but build a collection of menus that would look, smell, and taste good after being held in a hot box during transport.
It’s one thing to do that with meat — starting with higher fat meats and low and slow cooking techniques was one tactic — but quite another to do with vegetables, which are always in high demand. It took a few months of trial and error to come up with vegetable sides that fit the bill. Based on guest feedback, they played with the vegetable options until settling on ones that worked — typically served cold and spiked with garnishes upon serving to bring them back to life. “Really the work is never done,” says Mark. “Whenever my chefs or cooks are composing a new dish, I ask, ‘could it better?’ and then we talk about what we need to do to get there. Because it can always be better.”
The spirit of continuous improvement is alive and well in Bon Appétit’s commissary world, where success is hard-won but comes with great rewards. The one high-growth company that Custer opened with? We now serve them nationwide, and in partnership with Compass, they’ve become our first global account. “Commissaries are a way to get our foot in the door,” says Joseph. “We get in, and we then grow with our client base and partner with them.”