Bon Appétit Management Company

Among its many firsts, Bon Appétit Management Company was the first food service company to address the issue of antibiotic overuse in the meat supply. We don’t serve chicken, turkey, or hamburgers from animals that have been raised with the routine use of antibiotics in their feed or water, which is the default for most of the poultry, hog, and beef industries. CEO Fedele Bauccio, who served on the Pew Commission for Industrial Farm Animal Production, has several times briefed Congress and Capitol Hill staffers on why it’s urgent that the government safeguard these drugs that were developed to treat human illness. Yesterday, the Food and Environment Reporting Network‘s Maryn McKenna broke the story on  ABC News that more than 8 million American women are at risk of recurrent bladder infections because of the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. McKenna wrote […]

Bon Appétit Management Company was founded in 1987, by two food service industry veterans — CEO Fedele Bauccio and President Ernie Collins, later joined by COO Michael Bauccio — who had a vision of different kind of company. They set out to bring restaurant-quality food to corporations, universities, and specialty venues. Bon Appétit has become an industry pioneer in many other ways: the first to commit to local food, sustainable seafood, and cage-free eggs, and the first to tackled thorny issues such as food’s role in climate change, the reduction of antibiotics in agriculture, and farmworker rights. To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we worked with a great team at InHouse Creative Services to make this video about how we got here, and where we want to go next: The Story of Bon Appétit Management Company from Bon Appétit Management Company […]

Bon Appétit Management Company CEO Fedele Bauccio is proud to be among the 70 leading chefs, authors, food policy experts, nutritionists, CEOs, and environment and health organizations that have today sent an open letter to Congress urging lawmakers to revise the draft of the 2012 Farm Bill — which should more properly called the Food Bill, as it is the largest and most significant piece of legislation affecting what, how, and even whether Americans eat.

I was surprised and disheartened to read comments by Thomas Keller in the New York Times that chefs’ only responsibility is to taste. “Is global food policy truly our responsibility, or in our control?” Keller asks. “I don’t think so.” I disagree, as do many others, and I am hoping that Keller’s statements were taken out of context. Chefs have an enormous power to make a difference, and they can do so without sacrificing flavor.

We serve great food, and the story behind that food has as much to do with the people cooking and serving it as it does the farmers who grew it.

From foodies to vegans and the gluten-intolerant, today’s students are increasingly scrutinizing the food at their prospective colleges — and citing its quality and choice as major factors in their decision making. But comparing dining programs can be tough, without tasting food at each school and chatting with the dining services staff. The Daily Meal sought to make the process easier by pulling together a list of the nation’s top 20 colleges and universities, ranked by their food options. Four Bon Appétit accounts made the top 10!

These days, you can’t walk into a grocery store without being exposed to a new diet: flexitarian, vegetarian, vegan, paleo, cookie diet, low-fat, cabbage soup, gluten-free, elimination, low carb…the list goes on.

But there’s one important diet that most people have never considered: the low carbon diet. Shrinking our carbon “foodprint” is just as important as shrinking our waistlines. The food system — from fertilizers to livestock, transportation, and packaging — is responsible for at least one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, two elderly farmworkers took the brave and very unusual step of suing their employer, an onion grower in the Coachella Valley, for violating the few labor laws that protect farmworkers. California is one of the few states that require farmworkers to be paid the minimum wage. Farmworkers are exempt from many federal labor laws. These gaps were detailed in the Inventory of Farmworker Issues and Protections in the United States. We’ve created a new, educational slideshow based on key facts and statistics from the Inventory for educational purposes.

Last week Bon Appétit Management Company cafés around the country celebrated 13th Annual National Farmworker Awareness Week (NFAW). As part of our efforts to make people think about who harvests their food, we asked students at colleges and universities to create a collage about why they support farmworker rights. Here’s how some thoughtful students from American University in Washington, DC; Goucher College in Maryland; and Emmanuel College in Boston finished this sentence: I support farmworker rights because…

As part of our focus on farmworker rights, Bon Appétit Management Company is proud to partner with Student Action with Farmworkers for the 13th annual National Farmworker Awareness Week (NFAW). Running from March 25 – March 31 (César Chávez’s birthday), NFAW aims to raise awareness about the conditions of the men, women, and children who harvest our food and to bring attention to their efforts to secure fair wages and benefits, and to form and join unions.