Reed College Recognized with Gold Sustainability Award — Second for Bon Appétit
Congratulations to the Bon Appétit Management Company team at Reed College in Portland, OR, which follows Lewis & Clark College to become our second café to achieve gold certification from the City of Portland’s Sustainability at Work program.
This program recognizes leaders that are helping make Portland one of the cleanest, most environmentally responsible cities in the country. While it is no surprise that our Bon Appétit team at Reed College was a contender for this award (given our companywide commitments to humanely raised, sustainably produced food) it is a real honor to earn gold. This level of recognition means the Reed team went above and beyond expectations, embodying the Bon Appétit dream in every aspect of their operations.
Since 1993, when Bon Appétit first began serving Reed College, the school’s food service has grown in parallel with our commitments to food service for a sustainable future. Since 1999, the company has required the chefs at every single one of our 500-plus cafés around the county to spend at least 20% of their food dollars on small, owner-operated farms within 150 miles of their kitchen. At Reed, this has meant developing strong relationships with local farmers such as Scot Laney, who provides humanely raised, Oregon-grown ground beef to the café. Bon Appétit chefs serve only seafood that has been rated Best Choice or Good Alternative under the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guidelines at Reed they also serve seafood that is both sustainably caught and part of an important Pacific Northwest tribal program that supports the local Quinault and Nisqually tribal fishermen.
Reed students learn critical knife skills in this cooking class organized and led by Bon Appétit.
Our chefs at Reed have even hosted cooking classes to teach students how to cook healthful food while thinking of food in a larger context and paying attention to things like minimizing waste. Reed is so conscious of waste in their own cafés that they save any edible food that would otherwise get thrown out, and donate it to people in need in the community through Urban Gleaners.
The Bon Appétit team at Reed College shows what it means to live the dream of sustainable food service day in and day out. We are so proud that they have been recognized for their hard work with this award!