Bon Appétit Management Company

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.

The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is the only banquet I’ve ever attended where I was served just rice and water. The banquet, held March 7 at Seattle University, makes the inequalities of our world vividly clear in order to raise awareness about the experience of hunger and get people thinking and talking about how to take action to fight poverty. I used it as a jumping off point to also talk about the injustices experienced by female farm workers.

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                         Chef Paul Leiggi and Catering Director Chris Linn The last time I went wild mushroom foraging I was a child. My mom and I wandered the forests of the Catskill Mountains in New York. My basket was in one hand, my mother’s hand in the other. Our eyes set even more intently on the ground than we New Yorkers do on city streets. If I remember that day correctly, we found more poisonous than edible mushrooms. Regardless, foraging foods of all kinds quickly became a favorite activity. (To learn about my love of seaweed and seaweed harvesting, click here.) This November, while on the last stop of my fall West Coast Tour and visiting Willamette University in Salem, OR, I went back to the woods. The fog rolled into […]

~Written by Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Mgmt. Co.  As the East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit, I travel to college campuses to discuss food sustainability with students, and with our staff and chefs. I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Chef Justin McArthur, a recent addition to the Bon Appétit family at Case Western Reserve University. He’s been working with Bon Appétit for 4 months, but in the food industry for 14 years. He shared some of his thoughts on the industry, his career, and his passion for what he does.  When did you first become interested in pursuing food as a career? It’s the standard story; I started off as a dishwasher. My best friend got a job, so I decided to apply. So we were both dishwashers. Then the cooks all quit, […]

  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.

Farmer Bob Knight (on right) with Bon Appétit Management Company Biola University Chefs By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation “Farms are getting huge. Real estate is expensive in California. Farming in the global food economy requires [farmers] to have thousands of acres. Farmers that used to have 10 or 20 acres are now being pressured to buy 4,000 acres.” We are at the Bon Appétit Management Company Student Ambassador Program at Biola University, a kick-off event for thirty students to get to know some of the people behind food: Bon Appétit chefs, staff, and farmers. Executive Chef Peter Alfaro just spoke about the path that led him to work in the kitchen and his passion for making the food system more sustainable through purchases as a chef. Biology professor and head of the Biola Organic […]

~Written by Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Mgmt. Co.  As a Fellow for Bon Appétit, I have the pleasure of traveling to local farms from which Bon Appétit purchases, and meeting the very people who provide us with the food we eat. In September, I traveled to St. Libory, IL to visit Brad Schmitz, owner of Wenneman Meat Co., an old fashioned butcher shop and meat market that provides meat from Illinois farmers to Bon Appétit cafés at Washington University in St. Louis. Wenneman Meat Co. is unique to its area. Let’s face it—Illinois is corn country, not meat country. And sure enough, as I drove down IL-15 E—(nearly blinded by the sun, it was so bright!)—I passed field after field… after field… of corn, and soy. So what is this shop, sourcing local meat, doing in […]