Bon Appétit Management Company

Watch out California, there’s a new “green” college in town — one you might not have encountered! At Marymount California University in Los Angeles (formerly known as Marymount College), Bon Appétit General Manager Donna Novotney and Executive Chef Luis Jimenez have worked closely with the college’s sustainability officer, Kathleen Talbot, to tackle waste in the dining hall head on. In one semester they’ve gone trayless, phased out Styrofoam to-go containers, successfully implemented a reusable to-go container program, started a student garden, and launched a living herb wall!

During the summer, Washington University’s student-run farm, The Burning Kumquat, grows much more than just fruits and vegetables. At Camp Kumquat, now in its third year, a new crop of young gardeners is ripening.

Farm to Fork took on a whole new meaning — and a much shorter distance—this spring and summer at Regis University in Denver, as gardens planted and tended by Bon Appétit staff members yielded bounties for the kitchen.

One of the best parts about breaking bread together as a community is the chance to sit down and enjoy not just the exchange of tastes, but ideas. America’s fast food habits, which mostly involve people eating alone on the run, don’t allow that to happen. So it was a wonderful treat to have Eric Schlosser, the journalist who wrote the game-changing book Fast Food Nation—the 2001 book that exposed the unsustainable food safety, labor, and animal welfare issues of the fast food industry—visit University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA, for a talk, several farm tours, and a convivial meal.

At Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL, the Bon Appétit team is taking advantage of the year-round sun for a café garden.

Under the leadership of General Manager Stuart Leckie and Executive Chef Christian Bassett, the team at Saint Joseph’s takes what Bon Appétit requires nationwide in terms of social and environmental commitments (no small feat), and pushes each as far as they are able.

I had a wonderful time in sunny California where I visited Whittier College in honor of Food Day, an annual nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. My visit kicked off with a luncheon with landscape architect Glen Dake. Glen gave a presentation on how to build landscapes that volunteers both love and are capable of managing. The room was full of students from Whittier’s Urban Agriculture Club that were interested in learning techniques to get volunteers engaged with gardening. The presentation covered everything from how to make weeding assignments glamorous, to what plants can survive without much effort.