Bon Appétit Management Company

Ranchers who raise their meat responsibly and humanely are increasingly hoping that small-scale mobile slaughterhouse units — essentially abattoirs on wheels — can help them stay in business. Interested Colorado College students, Bon Appétit staff, and managers recently had the opportunity to attend a live slaughter demonstration by Ranch Foods Direct at Venetucci Farm.

TASTE Restaurant Pasty Chef Lucy Damkoehler speaks with the Chef’s Collaborative about her doughnuts Lucy Damkoehler began baking way back in fifth grade, when she would help her father knead and shape dough for bread as a hobby. She’s now a distinguished pastry chef for Bon Appétit Management Company’s TASTE Restaurant in Seattle, where her desserts have captured the hearts and bellies of restaurant diners far and wide, including my own. A few weeks ago, Lucy presented her latest doughnuts to a room full of chefs, farmers, and good food lovers at the Seattle Chef’s Collaborative Bakers’ Meet and Greet. Doughnuts cannot feign being a health food, but making them can be healthy for the community if the ingredients come from local, sustainable producers. Like the rest of the TASTE team (and Bon Appétit companywide), Lucy goes all-out to celebrate […]

The history of Tower Root Beer is one of growth, success, loss, and rebirth. It begins in Boston, 1914, when Italian Immigrant Domenick Cusolito decided that root beer was going to be his family’s ticket in the United States. Domenick took an old recipe and tweaked it, creating what the company now calls “root beer with an Italian spin” that Bon Appétit is proud to serve in its Boston-area cafés.

Executive Pastry Chef Ian Farrell (right) was first bitten by the sourdough bug about five years ago, when he grew a wild yeast starter from the skins of organic grapes. Now he lives his passion for hand-crafted wild yeast breads daily at Oracle in Redwood Shores, CA. Almost all the breads, sourdough or otherwise, for every café on this campus are made from scratch daily at the Oracle Bakery.

What’s the shortest route to a reporter’s heart? Through her stomach of course! We believe the best way to deliver the fundamental Bon Appétit story, that we cook everything from scratch using fresh, often local, as-sustainable- as-possible ingredients, is to feed it to people — literally. To that end, we invited a select group of local media and VIPs and Diet for a Hot Planet author Anna Lappé to join us for an informal discussion over dinner cooked by one of our stellar teams. Anna is one of the leaders of the food movement — she was born into it, as the daughter of Frances Moore Lappé, whose 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet became a best-seller and the first handbook for eco-conscious eaters everywhere. Anna interviewed Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation Director Helene York for her own book. […]

Industrial-scale agriculture often exacts a steep human cost. That was one of the lessons I learned last week from farmer Bob Knight and farmworker Marco Franco of the Inland Orange Conservancy, Bon Appétit at the University of Redland’s first Farm to Fork partner. They were the guest speakers at one of our Stories from the Fields events, held at the University Club.

By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation In this video, Katherine Ecker gives me a tour of Legacy Manor Farm, where animals don’t just roam the pasture, they roam the driveway, the house…and anywhere they want! One hen insists on laying her eggs in the back of Katherine’s car, and the Eckers have woken up to find a horse standing on their front porch. As part of our Farm to Fork program begun in 1999, Bon Appétit Management Company purchases fresh, seasonal produce from small, local farmers around the country. We recently celebrated the milestone of 1,000 such suppliers. As a Fellow for Bon Appétit, I get to travel to these different farms and learn about the joys and challenges farmers today face — and share their stories.

By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation  As West Coast Fellow, I’ve been traveling to some of Bon Appétit’s 1,000 Farm to Fork partners to understand their on-the-ground practices and challenges. I met farmer David Hoyle in between attending the Food Justice Conference in Eugene and presenting Stories from the Fields, about farm worker issues, at Lewis & Clark College. Dave and I chatted for a while in the rain on his farm, Creative Growers, tucked away in the back roads of Noti, Oregon.

In this video, Clair Rudolf, a third-generation vegetable farmer in Bluford, IL, proudly shows me around Double Star Farms.

  By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation The Whitman Model Farm Project not only conserves natural resources and improves Whitman College’s environmental efficiency, but also happens to produce delicious food. I know because I just had an outstanding salad at Bon Appétit Management Company’s Prentiss Dining Hall at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA for lunch. Now, post-meal, like a salad lover in search of her pot of gold, I’m off to find out where my microgreens[1] came from. It turns out that in the rooftop greenhouse of Whitman College’s Hall of Science, salad grows. Sweet pea tendril vines wind their way up from growing trays. Four students are planting and watering seeds. I am sweltering under the greenhouse’s captured sun, but still determined to learn more about my lunch.