Bon Appétit Management Company

Each September, Bon Appétit teams across the country gear up for Eat Local Challenge, a celebration of local ingredients, and the farmers and artisans who produce them. Since 2005, when Eat Local Challenge first occurred, the event has perhaps been the foremost way Bon Appetit brings attention to local food systems: by sourcing and serving 100% local meals to the delight of our guests across the country. 

Meet Bon Appétit’s nominee for 2023 Chef Appreciation Week Chef of the Year, Doran Payne!

When Bon Appétit Fellow Elise Dudley and over a dozen Vassar College students caravanned out to Amenia, NY earlier this year, they expected to learn firsthand about the dairy industry and meet a storied local Farm to Fork partner. They got even more, including a lesson in emerging cooperative models that protect small dairy farms.  

In New York’s Hudson Valley, Farm to Fork vendor Hudson Valley Fresh Dairy offers an alternative dairying model that insulates small dairy farmers negative trends impacting the dairy industry.

Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is sadly all too commonplace on the open sea. Researchers estimate that one in five wild-caught fish are landed via IUU fishing, leading to more than $30 billion in illegal profit with billions of dollars of losses to the legal global seafood economy. These egregious violations of national and international regulations threaten fisheries and ocean ecosystems and are also associated with horrendous human rights abuses including forced labor and human trafficking, making action to address the issue all the more urgent. For that reason, we at Bon Appétit Management Company have signed an open letter to President Biden asking The White House to take measures to crack down on IUU fishing.

Under the leadership of Culinary Director Kristela Nazario-Mendoza, the Bon Appétit Management Company at Chase Center team is putting Bon Appétit’s Farm to Fork program into action at one of the world’s premier sporting arenas.

The aroma of pizza crust, orange peels, chicken bones, and half-eaten sandwiches has become an all too familiar scent to Bon Appétit Management Company’s Midwest Fellow Elise Kulers and east coast Fellow Elise Dudley, who have weighed over 1,500 pounds of food waste produced by over 8,500 guests at colleges and universities this year.

Black Americans are still the victims of institutional racism and often unchecked discrimination, and we want to create space in our cafés this Juneteenth for community partners to observe this holiday how they want to.

In late April, food system professionals gathered virtually and in person for the annual Northeast Farm to Institution Summit, with Bon Appétiters leading multiple events. 

These LGBTQ+ organizations are just a handful of the many working to create a more inclusive and equitable food system from the farm to the kitchen and beyond.