Bon Appétit Management Company

The young farmers movement and interest in campus farms is blooming, and with them, inquiries about campus farms are steadily flowing to my inbox. This information is meant for sharing­ – for inspiration, ideas, and contacts. So here’s yet another amazing campus farm to know about: Zena Farm in Salem, OR.

This past fall I traveled to beautiful Colombia to visit the birthplace of the delicious Fair Trade Certified™ Cordillera chocolate with which Bon Appétit Management Company chefs bake. In this second post of the series, I share some of the details of my visits to cacao farms.

For Jewish college students following a kosher diet, meal times on campus can be daunting – unless they attend Washington University in St. Louis, MO, or Goucher College, in Baltimore, MD. These universities were ranked Nos. 1 and 3 by College Prowler as offering the best kosher dining options, and since College Prowler’s rankings are created “for students, by students,” prospective students can trust that these schools have got them covered.

Chocolate is such an integral part of American culture, and I too believe that little in this world can beat a bite of really fantastic chocolate. Well, I’m happy to report that getting to see where chocolate comes from, and learning all about how it’s grown and processed, actually gave consuming the finished product a run for its money. In October I had the immense pleasure of traveling to central Colombia to visit the birthplace of the delicious Fair Trade Certified™ Cordillera chocolate with which Bon Appétit Management Company chefs bake.

Jacob’s Farm is 300 acres plus 1 million square feet of greenhouse space filled with wonderfully pungent smells, intensely flavorful tastes, and beautiful, brightly colored flowers. This is one of the largest farms I’ve visited on my travels — and one of the most socially responsible. Jacob’s Farm offers great benefits to its employees: paying more than minimum wage and offering health care, dental care, and a 401(k) plan; and providing paid time off and end-of-year bonuses.

Located in the heart of ranching country, Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, is proud to support the work of grass-based ranchers like Cheryl and Robert Cosner of Upper Dry Creek Ranch.

Whitman Executive Sous Chef Julie Zumwalt, Dining Manager Susan Todhunter, and I recently had a chance to visit the Cosners. We stood between two grassy hills dotted with heritage apple trees in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Weston, OR, where the Cosners raise lamb and beef on 2,200 acres of certified organic grassland.

Every year, as our holiday thank-you to our clients, the Bon Appétit Management Company makes a donation on their behalf to a food-related nonprofit. Last year, it was Wholesome Wave, which helps bring healthful, locally grown fruits and vegetables to low-income families. This year’s partner is the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, which assists recent military veterans in using their many relevant skills to become a new generation of young farmers. We chose the Farmer-Veteran Coalition because it is working to fill two very urgent needs. At the end of this month, all American troops will have been withdrawn from Iraq. They and other U.S. military veterans are returning home to an already tough job market, and as NPR recently reported, they often have a tougher time finding employment than civilians. And although you won’t see ads on Craigslist for farmers, America has […]

At Bon Appétit Management Company, we take a lot of pride in our Farm to Fork program, in which we purchase fresh, local food from small farmers around the country. As part of its second annual Food Week, the University of Pennsylvania hosted a “Farmville Forum”: during this panel, Farm to Fork Partner* Trent Hendricks of Hendricks Farm and Dairy spoke quite frankly about his relationship with Bon Appétit and what it meant for his business: Transcript:

The final event of last spring’s Your Food Chain series at Santa Clara University ended with the theme of strawberries. I had the honor of speaking alongside strawberry farmer Irma Mendoza. When Irma was 17, she left Mexico for the United States and naturally sought out a farm job. She started out harvesting strawberries, but her experiences growing in California were different from growing up in Mexico. The biggest difference being that the berries were grown with extremely toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

The words “free range” conjure up many different images in people’s minds, the most idyllic of which includes luscious fields as far as the eye can see without any fencing to dilute the monotony of green. Unfortunately, the phrase isn’t regulated, so it more often gets slapped on chicken raised by the tens of thousands in a hangar-sized shed. But truly free range does exist — and it’s the lifestyle enjoyed by chickens on Larry Schultz Organic Farm in Owatonna, MN. Larry is one of Bon Appétit’s 1,000-plus Farm to Fork partners, supplying organic chicken to St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.