Bon Appétit Management Company

On a recent visit to Tecolote Farm, Katie Pitre showed students from St. Edward’s University that operating a small, diversified farm is no easy task. However, It’s a job she wouldn’t trade for anything else.

On Friday, the New York Times devoted front-page space to the amazing progress that our longtime partners the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has made toward fair treatment of farmworkers.

Every day, Americans take the abundance and low cost of our food supply for granted. Ironically, farmworkers — those whose lives are spent harvesting the fruits and vegetables we eat — can rarely afford to purchase them.

After growing up in Nebraska, the land of corn and cattle, I didn’t hear the term “sustainability” until I enrolled at Willamette University in Salem, OR, in 2006. And not until my sophomore year did I really connect the need for sustainability to the food system.

Bon Appétiters love what they do — and so opening the kitchen doors for behind-the-scenes tours is one of their favorite activities. On a weekday afternoon not long ago, several Northern California teams shared their passion with a group of enthusiastic middle school kids.

Longtime Bravo readers may remember Hunter Amlie, the cool 4-year-old with the sunglasses featured on the cover of spring 2009. And now, Hunter is Bon Appétit’s youngest Farm to Fork vendor!

A farm visit offers firsthand knowledge of how supporting a sustainable food system means being more than just willing to pay a higher price.

Of course Bravo readers know just how important food recovery and reduction of food waste is to Bon Appétit’s core values. So imagine how tickled Executive Chef/General Manager Ron Stewart of RS5 Café was to form a partnership with a farm that will let Bon Appétit feed the farm’s animals as well as its fields.

The first thing you notice when you walk into Theory at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland, OR, is the eye-popping, 10- by-50-foot mural that wraps around the entire soffit of the café. Simple dishes — a burger with the works, a smoothie, bisque, and a pizza—are broken down into vividly photographed ingredients arranged into formulas on a black background.With fewer than 50 words, the display eloquently (and mouthwateringly) conveys the theme of the re-imagined café, which is the playful science of food.

Small, organic farms and bikes attract the same sort of fans, it appears — both are undeterred by inclement weather. Despite chilly rain, over a hundred students and community members came together for a bicycle-powered celebration of local farms, the second annual Farm Bike Tour, in Northfield, MN,