Bon Appétit Management Company

When you’re outside of a company looking in, it’s hard to tell if the sustainability claims it makes are genuine. A year ago, I accepted a position with Bon Appétit Management Company in operations because it was one of a small handful of companies that seemed to be making significant efforts within a constrained food system. I was interested in sustainable business throughout graduate school, and what I heard over and over (and over!) again was: get some experience in operations. If you understand how a factory works or a kitchen runs, you’ll be more valuable to any sustainability team.

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.

This month’s Well Being Challenge encourages you to choose a healthy meal that also meets a low carbon principle for at least one meal each day this month. To get started, try the below recipe that includes a ‘super green’ seafood according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. To learn more about the nutrition principles of a low carbon diet, visit cafebonappetit.com

Students here sometimes complain that “there’s nothing to eat,” but that’s a result of their lack of creativity, not Bon Appétit’s. If you eat pasta Alfredo every meal, no matter how flavorful, it can get boring in the long run. Top Chef Dining Hall is designed to get people thinking outside their usual plates: in 30 minutes, five teams compete in making a three-course dinner (appetizer, entrée, and dessert) with only the ingredient and equipment available in the dining hall.

This month’s Well Being Challenge encourages you to choose a healthy meal that also meets a low carbon principle for at least one meal each day this month. To get started, try the below recipe that is a more locally-available version of a recipe often prepared with bananas, that are flown in from afar. To learn more about the nutrition principles of a low carbon diet, visit cafebonappetit.com

Once a way to preserve meat without refrigeration, charcuterie – the branch of cooking devoted to preparing bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, pâtés, and confit – has become an art within the culinary world. It’s also a popular cooking technique among devotees of sustainable food, because it utilizes parts of the animal that would otherwise be discarded. Making charcuterie isn’t easy, but Bon Appétit chefs across the country are embracing the challenge!

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.

Coffee is a morning necessity for some people. But for the busy student, waiting in line to get can throw off a packed schedule.To solve that problem, students at University of Redlands in Redlands, CA, can now order their favorite coffee drinks via text. Through a new easy-to-use program called Zingle, customers of the Bulldog Café are ordering their iced coffees, half-caf cappuccinos, and double mochas straight from their phones.