Bon Appétit Management Company

Set just north of the idyllic Furman Lake, an extremely nutrient-dense lake with countless turtles, mallards, and black and white swans milling about, is Furman University’s farm in Greenville, SC.

Campus farms aren’t just for college students anymore. In the past decade we’ve seen a surge of interest in growing food on college campuses — and recently, more corporations, restaurants, and museums are picking up spades and joining the movement.

City Garden at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, has taken shape under the stewardship of Prep Cook Manuel Soto-Soto.

Growing fresh, quality ingredients onsite at State Auto Insurance Companies.

Bon Appétit Sous Chef Shirelle Boyd from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, recently launched a garden project with nearby Monticello Middle School, which she had “adopted” through the First Lady’s Chefs Move to Schools program.

At Bon Appétit, we love local food — just ask the thousand-plus small farmers, fishers, and artisans who supply us through our Farm to Fork program. Inspired by them, teams at many of our corporate accounts have started growing some of their own food.

At Bon Appétit, we love local food — just ask the thousand-plus small farmers, fishers, and artisans who supply us through our Farm to Fork program. Inspired by them, teams at many of our corporate accounts have started growing some of their own food. These “kitchen gardens” not only provide ultra-fresh herbs and other produce, but also give us the opportunity to educate our guests about importance of local and sustainable food — and the hard work that goes into growing it. Here’s a look at “what’s growing on” at eBay, Target, and SAP!

Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, CA, is located just north of some of the richest coastal farmland in California, on which grows a variety of crops from lettuces, to artichokes, to strawberries. Marketing Manager Melissa Reynen, student garden volunteer and Bon Appétit student employee Danny Paikoff, and local photographer Greg Wight decided to head out on a combination fact-finding mission and photo safari to three of the coastal farms that supply SCU, in order to gather photos and stories to share with the SCU community.

Gardens are popping up on college campuses everywhere, and the most recent crop includes one at Saint Joseph College in Hartford, CT. The team there harvested its first bounty this year — butternut squash, tomatoes, lettuces, radishes, peppers, herbs, and more!

Left to right: Gallaudet gardeners Carolina Fojo, Marcy Knox, Nicholas Palazzo III, Ryne Worsham, Davina Kwong, Jon Terpak Eight months ago the Gallaudet Community Garden was nothing but an abandoned volleyball court filled with sand. Today, thanks to the efforts of students and Bon Appétit — with the help of the football team — it’s a thriving garden of fourteen 20-foot-long beds that just saw its first-ever harvest! “It was an exciting day for everybody,” reports Davina Kwong, Bon Appétit General Manager at Gallaudet University, who helped spearhead the garden’s creation. “Employees from the café came out to help with the harvest, pick the fresh vegetables, and dream up ways to show them off in the café the next day.” Right: Bon Appétit café employee Tanisha Bryant picks beets from the garden. Golden wax garden beans, cucumbers, and beautiful yellow, […]