THE ISSUE
IN THIS ISSUE ON THE COVER Foundry & Lux Executive Chef Carrie Pearl harvests eggplant from the Foundry garden Photo by Bart Nagel
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FROM FEDELE
RE:IMAGINE our future | FEDELE BAUCCIO
RE:CONSIDER
Developing customized re:opening plans that work for each client
FROM MICHAEL
Everyday heroes | MICHAEL BAUCCIO
RE:DISCOVER
Mills College pivots to grocery pickup
RE:THINKING
Meet Fedele’s Kitchen Cabinet Visit Base Camp
App-based sanitation reporting keeps cafés squeaky clean and teams accountable WashU trivia event tests team safety smarts St. Mary’s College of Maryland President says thank you
RE:INVENT
A roadmap for the journey we face ahead as we re:open our cafés in this ever-changing environment
RE:CLEAN
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RE:CHECK
Ensuring our employees are healthy
RE:DISTANCE
Our teams are “smizing” coast to coast, to inspire guests to do the same
RE:BUILD
Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to communications, marketing, and operations | MAISIE GANZLER
RE:ACQUAINT
University of the Pacific alumni cook along with Executive Chef Marco Alvarado
Turtle Creek team feeds Texas workers caring for the community
Protective Life Insurance keeps creativity in the box
Andrews University Dining steps up to support wider community
Foundry & Lux reopens for takeout, ups Instagram game
Star Chefs and nonprofits help spread the wellness word Food For Your Well-Being and other wellness activities go virtual Fedele’s Kitchen Cabinet takes on wellness and hits a plant-forward bullseye
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Bon Appétiters delight Oracle employees working from home
RE:STYLE
RE:VITALIZE
RE:CATER
Creative menus and innovative delivery and service styles
RE:ORDER
Launching Waste Not™ 2.0 Next-Gen Café Bon App Released
RO:BOTS Automated food preparation and delivery
RE:SOURCEFUL
Raleigh-Durham Bon Appétit accounts help Farm to Fork partner beat the blues Twitter team brings the produce to the people Supporting Chase Center’s Taste Makers
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RE:COMMIT
Let’s re:invent food service together
FROM FEDELE
IMAGINE
“When business becomes challenging, it is tempting to take shortcuts. But that’s not the Bon Appétit way.”
I
t’s been almost half a year since the pandemic started. Those months feel both like a blink, and like a marathon. Our world has been turned upside down as we confront public health, economic, and social-unrest crises all at once. I keep thinking about the world we live in and how we can help create a tiny ripple of hope as we move forward to reinvent and reconnect Bon Appétit. I am determined that we continue to strive to reach outside ourselves and help others. It brings me back to our vision of when we started 33 years ago, and how we defined our sustainability initiatives for future generations. I don’t want our values to change as we restart the company. They are what make Bon Appétit unique in the industry. They are our strength, why people join us. The last line in our Dream says, “We do this in a socially responsible manner for the wellbeing of our guests, communities, and the environment.” Our purpose is the very fabric that holds us together.
This issue of Bravo is about how we are reinventing Bon Appétit for this new era — while preserving those values: Cooking healthy meals, from scratch. Supporting local farmers and our communities. Maintaining our industry-leading sustainability standards as much as possible. They don’t stop us from innovating as we embrace new service models and heightened safety standards; indeed, I think they drive us to be even more innovative. When business becomes challenging, it is tempting to take shortcuts. But that’s not the Bon Appétit way. I am energized by how everyone has stepped up during these last few months. You have all done great work getting us ready for the next chapter. I have complete faith that with your passion and commitment, we will come out of this crisis stronger and even more resilient. Stay well, and take good care of yourselves,
01 | BRAVO
I
Lafayette College Executive Chef Scott Sypniewski was pretty excited under his mask about the latest basil delivery from the campus farm, La Farm, which he planned to turn into pesto for use in days to come at the Easton, PA, campus
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INVENT We’ve released a roadmap for the journey we face ahead as we re:open our cafés in this everchanging environment. Highlights follow, along with snapshots of these ideas being put to the test by our teams. Visit the extranet or contact your senior leader to see the full document. The three main goals that are guiding our teams are to: RE:INSPIRE
our guests by serving the same craveable, cooked-from-scratch food they know and love in new ways that feel not only safe, but thoughtful. Food still matters — maybe more than ever. We remain committed to local, seasonal, and sustainable sourcing, to finding ways to strengthen our food system, and to minimizing waste where possible.
RE:STORE
confidence in café dining for our clients and guests through highly visible cleaning and service protocols and technologydriven solutions.
RE:CONNECT
with our guests as café culture shifts. Our cafés have always been an essential part of the fabric of the communities we serve — places to meet, connect, and relax. We’re developing creative ways to keep our guests excited and engaged with our teams, and each other.
03 | BRAVOManager Karla Ramirez starts checking Foundry & Lux Front-of-House the day’s to-go lunch orders for the South San Francisco café
A Bon AppĂŠtit Silicon Valley team celebrates reopening
CONSIDER all aspects of the cafĂŠ experience to develop customized plans that work for each client
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REOPENING IN SAN MATEO, CA THE BON APPÉTIT TEAM at a Silicon Valley corporate account was thrilled to see much-missed guests, and the feeling was mutual. They also underscored the importance of thinking through processes that were established before COVID. Here are a few examples: X On
our first day back, the best feedback I heard was from a longtime regular customer. He wanted me to thank my team (and the facilities team) for all the effort that had been put into making our operation safe and comfortable for those who needed to be on-site. He expressed that he was truly fearful of coming back into the office, and that it was clear to him that we were taking this seriously and were prepared to offer safe service and delicious food. I could see from the look in his eyes and the tone in his voice just how genuine he was. All the hard work we put in to reopen safely really paid off for that customer!
X Be
sure to vet the receiving process with your on-site security. Our client allowed us to create a new receiving position to accommodate deliveries being dropped at the back entrance so the delivery driver doesn’t have to enter the building and go through the lengthy check-in and screening process (which also helps to reduce potential exposure for the client).
X Our campus has a free coffee program, and since the decision was
made to close all break rooms, we created a coffee hub for onsite employees. The coffee is served fully dressed, and we offer to add the sweetener, or put prepackaged condiments on the top of the cup. — Submitted by Uriah Palva, General Manager
Barista/Cashier Bim Thorpe is ready to pour at the new coffee hub
REOPENING IN BROOMFIELD, CO THIS FINANCIAL SERVICES HEADQUARTERS LOCATION was one of the very first corporate accounts to reopen. They were amongst the first to figure out the new service model. X We spent time thoroughly training our staff, making sure we had the right supplies and to-go containers, creating signage, and figuring out
how to set up the café with social distancing in mind. X The X I
staff returned with very positive attitudes. I think everyone was happy to get out of the house!
recommend flushing and cleaning all beverage machines before opening. Our espresso machine required a service call.
— Submitted by Buzz Hofford, District Manager
We’ve compiled a living Lessons Learned document with best practices, “don’t forget” to-do’s, and solutions to unforeseen problems. Check it out on the extranet and please submit learnings to share with your colleagues.
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FROM MICHAEL
EVERYDAY HEROES
“I am so grateful to all of you for the courage and commitment to safety you are showing every day. You are all doing an outstanding job of keeping yourselves, your teammates, our guests, and our clients safe while delivering on the promises we have made.”
A
lthough these are “unprecedented” times, as everyone says, some things stay the same. We know that our Bon Appétit teams always do what needs to be done, regardless of what the challenges may be.
communication by everyone, both internal and with our guests and clients. Your efforts are paying off. We are getting thank you notes from clients (some of them appear in this issue), and I just want you to know that you are the ones who truly deserve our gratitude.
What’s different about our current situation is the level of risk it presents. We are now a few weeks into dozens of reopenings, most in higher education but some corporate and specialty venue locations too. I am so grateful to all of you for the courage and commitment to safety you are showing every day. You are all doing an outstanding job of keeping yourselves, your teammates, our guests, and our clients safe while delivering on the promises we have made.
Last week, the week of Sept 13-19, was “Chef Appreciation Week.” This year it took on special significance as “the people behind the food became the heroes behind the food in one of the most challenging years we have ever seen,” as Dominic Blakemore, CEO of Compass Group PLC, said. Across multiple social media channels, we all celebrated the “heroes behind the food.” [See box, opposite page.]
It can’t be easy to keep all the new rules straight, to stay apart from each other in the kitchens and on the lines, to wear masks all shift long, while upholding our Bon Appétit standards for food and hospitality. But we continue to make it happen. I especially want to thank all of you for that, especially the
It is important to me that you know that every single one of our employees reading this is a hero to me. You all have a critical role to play, whether you’re in the kitchen or the front of the house or the back office. We are grateful for your efforts in the service of Bon Appétit, every day.
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SOME OF OUR ARMY OF #HEROESBEHINDTHEFOOD
“Chef Appreciation Week” has been an annual tradition on social media for some time now. This year Compass Group and Bon Appétit Management Company broadened the pool of people to celebrate beyond that one title. During the week of Sept. 13-19, Instagram and Facebook were filled with an inspiring scroll of portraits of #HeroesBehindTheFood. A selection:
Executive Chef Alex Drumm and his team have fed Emerson College students, faculty, and staff as well as young adults in a homeless youth program
Pacific University Sous Chef Allison O’Neill, who grew up with a love for cooking instilled by her chef-father but attended Le Cordon Bleu anyway, loves to make the team laugh
Edwards Lifesciences Executive Chef Rene Adame, who was “born and raised Bon Appétit,” has been feeding essential workers at this medical technology company as well as thousands at homeless shelters around the region
General Manager Ally Shelden and Executive Chef Daniel Williams have been making sure the onsite employees and test operators at the autonomous vehicle technology startup Cruise remain well-fed, so they can deliver donated meals and groceries to some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable populations
Food+ Sous Chef Francis Sibal has baked hundreds of batches of the sweet, fluffy traditional Filipino bread pandesal for healthcare workers
Lafayette College Cook Lynette Shorter “brings positive energy to the kitchen every day” and learned to cook starting as a child from her grandmother
When Transylvania University’s dining hall closes for the night, Utility Worker/Dishwasher Simeon Glasper — who wanted to smile for the camera so temporarily removed his mask — goes into superhero cleaning mode in the kitchen
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Executive Chef David Smigo, who earned Cornell College’s Purple Rock Award this summer, is “the hardest working human I’ve ever met” and “a culinary Mozart” who “makes the trains run on time” says General Manager James Richards
DISCOVER
Shhh... We can’t name names, but some of the technology and retail giants we serve are sharing their research with us, and that’s informing our reopening plans. We have global perspective via Compass Group, which has already navigated reopenings in China and Europe and developed best practices.
And we’ve remained open in many places, serving students unable to return home and essential workers, so we’ve already developed and tested many successful new procedures and service/menu options.
General Manager Merilee McCormick hands a Mills College graduate student her grocery box order
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MILLS COLLEGE PIVOTS TO GROCERY PICKUP
Executive Chef Cynthia Motta makes pizza from scratch using Mills Farm ingredients
WHEN CALIFORNIA WENT INTO SHUTDOWN in March, more than 200 Mills College undergraduate and graduate students stayed on the leafy, tree-filled Oakland campus, along with 35 or so critical college staff members such as security, student life, operations and finance. Although about half the students eventually went home, students began trickling back to attend late-summer bridge programs. Mills College asked Bon Appétit General Manager Merilee McCormick, Executive Chef Cynthia Motta, and a small team to figure out how to feed everyone remaining on campus in an efficient, safe, and cost-effective way. Merilee centralized all the campus food operations at the Mills Tea Shop, which already boasted a small convenience store, grab and go cooler, and a limited but spacious servery with room for socially distant ordering and payment. She began stocking non-food items such as toilet paper and aspirin, and pantry staples, and offering grocery orders. Basically, people could give her a list — sometimes as late as that same-day morning — and she’d bundle them and order them to be delivered to her through Bon Appétit’s regular distributors. Some supplies came right from campus. The Mills Farm was producing like crazy over the summer, and offered its own communitysupported agriculture subscription box. Merilee worked with Mills Farm Manager Julia Dashe to offer extra produce, herbs, and flowers in the Tea Shop grocery boxes. Cynthia began making a weekly Mills Farm-inspired pizza for pre-order, and incorporating the produce into specials.
Grill Cook Gary Chun restocks the Mills shop’s popular items
“It is great to see how these new offerings have been embraced and we are pleased to make them a regular part of the Bon Appétit service to support our community,” said Renée Jadushlever, vice president for strategic partnerships at Mills. “Mills values our collaborative relationship with Bon Appétit and appreciates the creativity and out-of-the-box thinking of Merilee and our team to address perceived challenges in providing services at this unprecedented time.” — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
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A meeting of Fedele’s Kitchen Cabinet — top row, left to right: CEO Fedele Bauccio, Director of Communications Bonnie Powell, Campus Executive Chef Jessica Yarr-Pinchin, and Executive Chef Patrick Youse. Middle row: Vice President of Image + Style Carrie Buckley, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Maisie Ganzler, Director of Culinary Operations Patrick McElroy, and Regional Culinary Director Robbie Lewis. Bottom row: Director of Operations Michelle Reuter, Resident District Manager Ty Paup, Culinary Director Bill Telepan, and Executive Chef Carrie Pearl.
THINKING As we re:open our cafés, we are re:inventing our food programs We’re of course focusing on cleaning, distancing, and packaging, but believe that now more than ever, food still matters.
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MEET FEDELE’S KITCHEN CABINET AS ONE CHEF RECENTLY SAID, “chefs are natural problem-solvers.” CEO Fedele Bauccio has been virtually convening a select group of those MacGyvers under the banner of Fedele’s Kitchen Cabinet. These hand-picked culinarians represent the breadth of our business lines as well as geographies. They were broken into smaller teams by account type and asked hard questions about reinventing our business. Each group was tasked with creating and sharing tools their peers can use to maintain our made-from-scratch philosophy, with fewer people in the kitchen and different service models. These in-house experts bring a variety of diverse experiences and skill sets to rethinking food service. Reimagining the roles of commissaries and ghost kitchens on a large campus X Michelle Reuter, Director of Operations, Emory University, Atlanta X Ty Paup, Resident District Manager & Director of Culinary Operations, Brown University, Providence, RI X Patrick McElroy, Director of Culinary Operations, Washington University in St. Louis Best practices for rethinking self-service stations and ordering ahead through an app X Carrie Pearl, Executive Chef, Foundry & Lux and The Chandlery, South San Francisco X Jessica Yarr-Pinchin, Campus Executive Chef, Adobe, San Jose How to use new service models to reinforce our commitments to wellness or plant-forward X Bill Telepan, Culinary Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art X Patrick Youse, Executive Chef, Dreamworks Animation, L.A. Moving beyond the sandwich — culinary techniques for the best food to-go X Robbie Lewis, Regional Culinary Director, Northern California The Kitchen Cabinet members covered each of the above topics in a live, hour-long webcast with plenty of time for questions. The array of menuing, staff-modeling, and other tools they created are now available for everyone in the company to use. — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
HEADING TO BASE CAMP
The three Fedele’s Kitchen Cabinet members from large university operations — Michelle Reuter (Emory University), Patrick McElroy (Washington University in St. Louis), and Ty Paup (Brown University) — came up with a labor-saving system called Base Camp. Bon Appétit has never allowed chefs to buy prepackaged “soup bases” or stock, and we aren’t about to start now. Base Camp leverages Bon Appétit chefs’ cooking-fromscratch expertise in a menu-efficient way, by centralizing the production of “base” sauces, dressings, and ingredients such as par-cooked grains. The commissary kitchen team might make a basic Béchamel that other cooks around campus can turn into a broccoli cheddar soup, fettuccine Alfredo sauce, or roasted garlic and sundried tomato sauce. A basic vegan barbecue sauce can become sweet Kansas City style or Korean barbecue with just a few additions. Pre-pandemic, every Bon Appétit kitchen had a stock pot bubbling away. Now, with smaller staffs, it makes sense to do that in one kitchen for use by all. Michelle, Pat, and Ty also recommend centralizing other preparation, such as cooking whole grains, processing vegetables, and fabricating cuts from whole Farm to Fork animals. The Bon Appétit Web Development team has already translated the labor-saving and recipe-inspiration ideas of Base Camp into Café Manager, the chef-facing back end of all the company’s individual websites, including with a training video. — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
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re:fined
STYLE
retail best practices to support a new guest experience
The hallmark of Bon Appétit cafés has always been about putting the fresh, whole ingredients out front for guests to see. With the increased need for prepackaged and reduced-contact meals, we’re restyling our merchandising approach and our café setups to offer the same restaurant-quality meals in enticing new ways.
FOUNDRY & LUX REOPENS FOR TAKEOUT, UPS INSTAGRAM GAME AFTER CLOSING DURING San Mateo County’s shelter-in-place order, Foundry & Lux in South San Francisco re-opened for pickup or on-campus delivery, using online ordering. With guests no longer able to walk around the café and eat with their eyes before deciding what to order, the Foundry & Lux team knew they had to find a way to get the word out. They already had a strong Instagram following (@foundryandlux), but now they had to up their game even more. Among their new, to-go-friendly offerings for this new era are special heat-and-eat Dinner Hero kits, cocktail kits, and more. As has been true since normal times, justharvested ingredients from Foundry & Lux’s on-site garden make their way into almost every menu item, giving the on-site team great fodder for photography. A Vietnamesestyle salad bowl, for example, featured herbs from the garden, grilled Mary’s Chicken, and a sweet chili dressing, while the new Silk Road Organic Matcha includes Foundry & Lux garden strawberries. The colorful food photos are shot outside in natural light, often with a natural background of greenery, carefully composed in their to-go packaging to show guests what to expect when ordering from Foundry & Lux. Tagging the vendors who have products featured in various menu items or in kits has helped to increase reach. For variety, the team also posts staff in mid-prep and closeup shots of what’s growing in the garden. The efforts are working: Foundry & Lux now
Menu items like this Vietnamese-style salad bowl and rotisserie chicken are packaged in the to-go containers guests can expect and photographed outside in natural light to ensure the best photo possible
has more than 1,000 followers, and orders are going strong. The Foundry & Lux garden also does double duty as a peaceful place for guests to queue as they wait to pick up their to-go orders. A walk-up window has increased the sales of coffee and tea as well as breakfast and lunch items.
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Always concerned about minimizing waste, the Foundry team added an option for guests to indicate they’d like to skip the togo bags and/or the packaged compostable cutlery kits when placing their online orders. Many have taken them up on it: there has since been a significant decrease in the number of bags and cutlery kits needed. — Submitted by Michelle Tejada, Catering Manager
PROTECTIVE LIFE INSURANCE KEEPS CREATIVITY IN THE BOX WHILE MANY BON APPÉTIT CAFÉS across the nation closed temporarily during shelter-in-place orders, the Bon Appétit team at Protective Life Insurance Company in Birmingham, AL, has been fortunate to remain open to serve employees who must continue to work in the corporate office. With a smaller number of guests to serve and a shift to no-contact service, the team has come up with an out-of-the-box approach that’s — well, in a box! At the start, General Manager Brandi Johnson challenged Executive Sous Chef Christina Fairley and Sous Chef Renita Brunridge to include creative and surprising items on the menu to tempt guests. Christina and Renita were up for it. Their creations include made-from-scratch challah turned it into stuffed French toast, with house-made cream cheese and berry compote; savory Sloppy Joe sandwiches with crumbled Beyond Meat “beef,” beets, and cremini mushrooms; and an Italian sub salad boasting a rainbow of vegetables, cured meats, cheese, and perky pepperoncini.
Sous Chef Renita Brunridge and Catering Head Sharon Taylor prepare the day’s lunch entrées for Protective employees
To make ordering easy for Protective employees, the Bon Appétit team shares the weekly menu by eblast a week in advance. Guests choose the menu items they want and order by email. They then pick up their prepared orders at their designated time each day, which helps prevent lines and ensures physical distancing can be maintained. The Bon Appétit team likes the process, too, as it ensures an accurate customer count, reduces the potential for food waste, and results in happy guests. Protective employees love that the same creative, cooked-from-scratch quality they’ve grown to love can be delivered in a manner that supports their safety. By doubling down on safety and hospitality during this pandemic, Brandi and the Protective team hope to ease the minds of their guests when the café returns to full service. — Submitted by Brandi Johnson, General Manager
The Italian sub salad has all the flavors of the deli favorite
DINE-ING OUT: The in-house, full-service restaurant, Dine, must remain closed for now at this Silicon Valley corporate location, so the Bon Appétit team has converted this space into a pop-up market for dry goods (flour, yeast, rice, pasta), groceries (milk, eggs, produce), and safety supplies (hand sanitizer, gloves). The idea is to provide guests with an easy place to shop to save trips to the grocery store. Barista/Cashier Yvette Angulo (pictured) is ready to get them what they need! — Submitted by Uriah Palva, General Manager
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CLEAN
And re:clean. And re:clean.
Cleaning now takes center stage. Guests want to see all the precautions we’re taking to keep them safe. APP-BASED SANITATION REPORTING KEEPS CAFÉS SQUEAKY CLEAN AND TEAMS ACCOUNTABLE BON APPÉTIT USES ORIGAMI RISK, an industry-leading risk management software platform, for quality and safety risk management. On-site managers and regional leadership use the Origami Mobile Forms smartphone app to conduct a number of food and workplace safety assessments in real time (as well as our Great Expectations quality standards program), log any disciplinary actions (including photos of an issue), and refer to previous audits. Using Origami Mobile Forms, all levels of on-site managers conduct quick daily assessments of café safety practices, which now incorporate COVID-19-specific criteria and café reopening audits. For example, they must verify that high-touch areas and equipment are being cleaned and disinfected (e.g. door knobs, display cases, equipment handles, check-out counters, and order kiosks) in accordance with the appropriate schedule. Through Origami, managers can choose to conduct a complete Food Quality Assurance Assessment or assign Food Safety Mini Assessments, which cover different areas of food safety and employee behavior. And their district managers and regional safety champions get notifications assuring accountability.
Transylvania University Front of House worker Karrie Schumacher sanitizes the door handle of the café
Origami also houses all claim data and assessment data for each location. Our Integrated Safety Team builds dashboards shared monthly with senior leadership tracking all claim data, assessments, and injury data graphs so that problem hot spots can be flagged and addressed. — Submitted by Jenny Slafkosky, Writer/Editor
WASHU TRIVIA EVENT TESTS SAFETY SMARTS: Washington University in St. Louis Dining team members gathered at the Danforth University Center for a challenging, interactive session of COVID-19specific safety trivia led by Bon Appétit Human Resources Consultant Denise Massey. They were divided into two teams and given only 30 seconds to shout out their answers. Everyone revelled in showing off their safety chops and cementing this essential knowledge. Members of the winning team went home with a gift card. — Submitted by Brittni Walters, Marketing Manager
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The Bon AppÊtit team at St. Mary’s in a COVID-19 safety training session
August 19, 2020
David Sansotta General Manager Bon Appetit Management Company 16800 Point Lookout Road Saint Mary's City, Maryland 20686 Dear David, On behalf of the entire campus community, I want to personally thank you and each member of the Bon Appetit staff for the amazing work you accomplished when faced with what seemed like an insurmountable challenge caused by the pandemic. Your thorough knowledge, in-depth planning, and exceptional problem solving capabilities were not only impressive, but demonstrated your dedication to the well-being of this institution and its effective food service operations. It is because of you and your staff that we can provide a safe and exceptional dining experience for our students. I am extremely proud of the way Bon Appetit aggressively addressed the challenge of providing safe and healthy meals to the faculty, staff, and students. You developed practical and wellorganized traffic configurations to ensure safe and effective student flow. Providing two hot meal lines and two separate grab-and-go venues was pivotal in ensuring that students had convenient and adequate locations for acquiring their meals. Your attention to detail with regard to the placement of Plexiglas barriers, hand sanitizing stations, food stations, signage, and floor markings was remarkable. I appreciate your diligence in making sure we were in full compliance with the County Health Department, FDA, CDC, State, and local guidelines. I want you and every member of your staff to know that I value the dedication, professionalism, and effort you have put into your work and that I am extremely grateful and appreciative of your efforts. Well done! Sincerely,
Paul A. Pusecker, III Vice President, Business & CFO cc: Michael Corradino, District Manager, Bon Appetit Management Company
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CHECK A socially distant Bon Appétit Management Company staff meeting at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY
Ensuring our employees are healthy, for their well-being and the safety of our guests This isn’t about crossing things off a list, it’s about care. We’re checking in and paying attention to our employees to ensure we’re all faring well. Managers are conducting pre-shift screenings that align with local regulations, including no-contact temperature scan procedures and interview questions. Should an employee call in sick or disclose that they have had contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, a clear decision tree and step-bystep action plan guides next steps. Employees who need help coping can access a suite of well-being resources through their eligible benefits plans: X Teladoc
– Virtual medical care available 24/7 Advocate – Mental health and well-being X Sanvello – On-demand help with stress, anxiety, and depression X Sleepio – Six-week online program to help rebuild a healthy sleep pattern X Daylight – An app to help cope with anxiety X EAP/Health
NorCal Opening Project Manager Tessa Vitale (right) takes Sales & Catering Manager Nathan Carraway’s temperature
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DISTANCE The spirit of hospitality, a bit further apart
Our teams are “smizing” coast to coast, to inspire guests to do the same.
Starbucks HQ Café Supervisor Adreanna Hill
Barista Amy Orear makes iced coffee for a Mills College graduate student
Lafayette College Senior Ryan Branch was the first student to try out the new menu (and safety protocols) at Gilbert’s Café this semester
SCREEN-FREE ORDERING: Foundry & Lux’s new pickup station for pre-ordered meals also allows walkup orders; guests can linger in Foundry’s peaceful garden while they wait. “Creating a socially distant ordering situation has helped us sell to guests who might not order through the app,” says Executive Chef Carrie Pearl. “Let’s not lose sight of why we are doing this, why we have dedicated our craft to this industry. We want to make sure that we are putting the guest at ease and making them feel invited! Let’s let the guest know that there are friendly hospitable people behind the scenes — and the screens!” — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
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BUILD
...a sense of security before
TALKING ABOUT FOOD | MAISIE GANZLER
START WITH TALKING ABOUT THE MOST BASIC OF NEEDS AND WORK YOUR WAY UP “While it’s critical that we at Bon Appétit continue to live and preach all of our values, guests’ ears might not be open to those messages at this time.”
W
e’re all under a lot of stress right now. Just as we at Bon Appétit Management Company are trying to re:invent food service, many of our guests are having to reinvent their daily lives. Things that we took for granted like being in the same room with your professor, having daycare for your kids, and being able to sit with friends in the café now come with never-before anticipated dangers. These risks are weighing heavily on our collective minds and making it difficult to concentrate on other things. While it’s critical that we at Bon Appétit continue to live and preach all of our values, guests’ ears might not be open to those messages at this time. We need to meet
them where they are, ease whatever anxieties we can, and help them navigate this new time. In trying to figure out how to do that, I was reminded of a psychological theory I learned in my very first Management 103 course in college: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The theory — in my words not Maslow’s (it’s been a long time since I was a freshman) — is that people must first be able to fulfill their basic needs before moving on to higher-level desires. We all start at the bottom of the pyramid, with physiological needs, and work our way up, eventually reaching a desire for self-actualization. Our communications, marketing, and operations plans should recognize this and serve those fundamental needs first.
SMALL WORLD Did you know our very own CEO Fedele Bauccio actually worked with Abraham Maslow, creator of the eponymous Hierarchy of Needs, himself? Toward the end of his life, Dr. Maslow, accepted a fellowship with the Saga Administrative Corporation in Menlo Park, CA — the very same food service company at which Fedele, President Michael Bauccio, and several other members of our senior leadership team got their start. Stepping away from teaching gave the in-demand professor time to focus solely on his writing, and while doing so, he officed on the same campus as Fedele. “He sure was a nice guy,” says Fedele of one of the world’s most famous humanistic psychologists. “He was all about human behavior, self-esteem, and loving one another.”
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moving on to meet higher level mental and emotional needs of our guests
SELF-ACTUALIZATION: Offering virtual engagement and
educational activities to promote well-being.
ESTEEM: Helping people feel proud of their workplace or
their school, by sharing our community efforts and sustainability commitments.
LOVE AND BELONGING: Continuing to create communi-
ty around food, finding ways to interact with guests even while wearing a mask or standing behind a barrier, and constructing opportunities for guests to connect with each other.
SAFETY: Reassuring them we are taking all precautions to
prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as cleaning, sanitizing, and social distancing.
PHYSIOLOGICAL: Making sure guests know where to eat,
when the cafĂŠ is open, how to order, and what to expect, and reassuring those on special diets and/or with food allergies that they too will be taken care of.
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ACQUAINT A warm welcome that communicates care and safety
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO COVID-19 has meant lots of changes for everyone around the world. We’ve modified dining service for your safety and are asking you to help in a few ways, too!
In a world of constantly changing information, it’s now more important than ever to communicate with our guests clearly, set expectations, and let them know we’re here to help. We’re re :orienting guests to a café experience re:designed for safety. Our Cafebonappetit.com websites allow us to offer instant, customizable ways to communicate new café protocols. We’ve provided customizable collateral for in-café print and digital signage (where available) and across any client internal marketing channels to explain new safety precautions. And we’re sharing all the many inspiring stories of our teams’ community support and aboveand-beyond efforts. And we’re re:engaging — virtually — by offering dynamic digital events that captivate guests online, such as chefled demos, recipes for guests’ favorites, virtual trivia contests, and more.
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UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC ALUMNI COOK ALONG WITH EXECUTIVE CHEF MARCO ALVARADO UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC’S ALUMNI ASSOCIATION has always offered a hearty roster of creative programming to engage alumni. In the time of sheltering in place, much of that programming has gone virtual. When the Alumni Association reached out to Bon Appétit Resident District Manager Sia Mohsenzadegan and Executive Chef Marco Alvarado to do a “Lunch & Listen” cooking class, they jumped at the chance to brainstorm ideas.
carne asada, blackened grilled fish, and vegetable (bell peppers, red onion, zucchini, and mushrooms). They also made a crunchy cabbage coleslaw mix for the fish tacos, two homemade salsas (charred tomato-chile de arbol and roasted tomatillo-serrano), and tortillas made from scratch! Responses to the second class were equally positive. The association posted the recordings of the carbonara and taco classes to
YouTube, and now that UOP is open, Marco is busy recording videos for current students. “I’d love to teach people how to get really great flavors out of a mushroom or a cabbage,” he said. “That’s usually how we eat at home, and lately I’ve gotten questions from lots of friends and family about how to use the vegetables in their fridges.” — Submitted by Jenny Slafkosky, Writer/Editor
For the first “Kooped-Up Kitchen” in April, Marco chose a simple meal: salad and pasta carbonara with added vegetables for a plant-forward twist. Since many people were limiting their grocery shopping, Marco wanted to demonstrate a simple recipe that could be made with common kitchen staples as well as accommodate ingredient swaps. The association set up a remote video rig in UOP’s DeRosa University Center kitchen, from which Marco was still feeding a few students who are sheltering in place on campus — as well as making and delivering daily hot meals to first responders at San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton. Marco provided a base recipe in advance, and many of the class participants chose to cook right alongside him in their home kitchens. The Alumni Association offered a moderator for the classes, who monitored participant questions and engaged Marco in conversation as he cooked. This meant Marco could offer real-time advice as people cooked and answer questions about technique. The alumni loved it, and the Association asked for a second, taco-focused class. For this one, Marco decided to share the spotlight by bringing in a special guest: his wife Deisy! She frequently prepares Mexican food at home for the family (the couple has two boys), as it’s part of her cultural roots, so the class participants benefited from the couple’s shared culinary expertise. They tag-teamed making three types of tacos:
Marco called on his wife, Deisy, to help demo tacos with all the fixings, and even from-scratch tortillas!
Marco’s advice to other chefs planning a remote cooking class: X Like
any good chef, prepare your mise en place in advance.
X Write
down a step-by-step recipe for yourself. Even if you know it by heart, it will keep you on track in front of the camera and help you express your ideas and expertise more clearly so you don’t confuse your students.
X Share
the written recipe with your students in advance so they can follow along.
X Keep
it simple. If your explanations get too complicated, you’ll confuse your students.
X If
possible, work with an off-camera moderator who can engage you in conversation while you cook and monitor participant questions. It keeps your audience engaged and makes the program more dynamic!
X Talk
about what you know and share your own perspective and tastes so people can get to know you.
X Special
on-camera guests like family members are also great!
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BON APPÉTIT TEAM DELIGHTS ORACLE EMPLOYEES WORKING FROM HOME LIKE MOST OFFICES in the San Francisco Bay Area, software giant Oracle’s Redwood Shores headquarters and nearby satellite locations have been closed since the pandemic started in March. Thousands of its employees are working from home, and many of the Bon Appétit team members who usually feed them are as well. And while they may not be cooking their fresh from-scratch meals for thousands daily, they are keeping quite busy with frequent virtual culinary experiences! Resident Marketing Director Cara Brechler, Culinary Director Tim Hilt, and Director of Operations Heather Lee are driving the effort, which they have dubbed “commUNITY”: a reimagined way of staying connected, through sharing favorite recipes, kitchen hacks, local secrets, home inspiration, and family activities. Here’s just a few of their activities: X Café 300 Chef de Cuisine Jose Luis Ugalde shared the recipes in a live demo of his very popular baba ganoush and flatbread — usually sold out at the Mezze Station during “normal” lunch service. X A weeklong spotlight on Filipino food, including a live cooking demo with Café 600 Chef/Manager Joe Roldan, who walked guests through making his chicken-pork adobo recipe. X To help out one of their Farm to Fork vendors, Triple Delight Blueberries, Tim went out to the farm for a (socially distanced) video interview that was edited together and then shown before a livestream session showing how to make a blueberry-centric smoothie and blueberry-lavender fauxjito. (Tim also purchased a considerable amount of blueberries and froze them for use when business resumes.) X Local San Francisco Chef and Restaurateur Nikki Cooper, who is also the author of “Chocolate Covered Gratitude With Blessings On Top,” read her book on a Zoom broadcast to a rapt audience of children of Oracle employees. X The kids (and many grownups) also delighted in a virtual visit to ShangriLlama, a llama ranch in Texas, through which they got to meet Prince Barack O’Llama, King Dalai Llama, Baron Drama Llama and
300 Bakery Executive Chef Terri Wu (back) and Sous Chef Janeth Estrada (front) donned masks in the Oracle Kitchen to take almost 100 Oracle viewers through a step-by-step chocolate chip cookie-making demonstration
Oracle Culinary Director Tim Hilt interviewed Farm to Fork vendor Kim Sorenson from Triple Delight Blueberries
many others, learning what llamas eat, what llama milk can be used for, what sort of jobs they might do on a ranch, and other fun topics. To let the community know about these events, Cara started a weekly newsletter that goes out every Monday, featuring recipes — including a weekly Zero-Proof Cocktail by Conference Center Catering Manager Karly Miller — cooking and wellness tips, registration links for the live sessions, and pre-recorded videos (such as a fun passthe-peach celebration of summer’s most beloved stone fruit). They’re also getting help from Oracle via the company’s fitness group, which shares the activities in the fitness weekly newsletter, and internal message boards. The most hotly anticipated comm-UNITY session to date has been the unveiling of the Oracle 300 Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookie.
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Executive Chef Terri Wu and Sous Chef Janeth Estrada donned masks in the Oracle Kitchen to take almost 100 Oracle viewers through a step-by-step cookie-making demonstration. (The secret to the cookies? Cake flour instead of all-purpose!) Cara, Tim, and Heather ran the show on the back end, asking the questions that viewers typed in, such as “How do you freeze the dough?” and “What is the key for making the cookie thick vs. flat?” The thank-yous and compliments also flowed in via chat — “Thank you from my whole family! We’ve been missing our cookies” and “Really great! We miss you!” … along with a flurry of requests for additional cookie recipes. The Bon Appétit team is more than happy to oblige, and they look forward to sharing warm, just-baked cookies and more in person with their fan club when it is safe to do so. — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
TURTLE CREEK TEAM FEEDS TEXAS WORKERS CARING FOR THE COMMUNITY
Members of the Texas National Guard show off their lunches provided by Bon Appétit
WITH THE CLIENT’S SUPPORT, the Bon Appétit team at a Dallas corporate account known as Turtle Creek offices has been working hard to provide boxed meals for organizations that serve people in need in the community. The team has been involved in two different meal programs: one to provide lunches to critical health care workers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and another to feed members of the Texas National Guard stationed in Dallas while they are volunteering at the North Texas Food Bank. Altogether, the Bon Appétit team has been putting together up to 250 lunches daily, for more than 4,000 lunches total so far! From baristas and catering attendants to cooks and culinary managers, the whole team has thrown themselves into these community efforts. In true Bon Appétit fashion, the lunches are made fresh each morning using local, wholesome ingredients. The Turtle Creek Bon Appétiters are so grateful to be able to give back to their community during this challenging time. — Submitted by Rachel Phair, General Manager
Barista Chris Ocampo helps build boxed lunches for the daily delivery to the National Guard
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“THIS IS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST FEEDING PEOPLE”: ANDREWS UNIVERSITY DINING TEAM STEPS UP TO SUPPORT WIDER COMMUNITY
The Andrews University team in Berrien Springs, MI: Executive Chef Berta Arroyo, General Manager Linda Brinegar, and Sous Chef Lance Clark
WHAT DO YOU DO when you hear about needy international families living on campus and seniors in the community with no way to get food — and you have half a ton of Farm to Fork beans in the basement? If you’re Bon Appétit General Manager Linda Brinegar at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI, you get to work. As the COVID-19 crisis began unfolding in March and students at Andrews went home, Linda, Executive Chef Lance Clark, and their remaining small team of Bon Appétit and Andrews University Dining employees continued to feed the 30 or so students who needed to stay on campus. With the university’s blessing (and financial support), they began expanding their efforts. They’re now delivering their delicious from-scratch vegetarian and vegan food — Andrews University is a Seventh-day Adventist Church educational institution — to members of the public in a 5-mile radius, and they’ve started an incredible food donation program for hundreds of international families living in apartment complexes on campus.
AUEATS, TO GO It started with the AUeats program, to-go lunches that the public could order in the morning via phone. Every day AU Dining makes two hearty yet healthy options, a vegetarian and a vegan one. Two
examples of recent delicious meals: pea and potato samosas with cilantro lime chutney, red lentil dahl, saffron rice, cumin-roasted vegetables, choice of chickpeas and brown rice or mulligatawny soup, spinach salad with carrot ginger dressing, and a chocolate brownie; and walnut “meatballs” with tangy barbecue sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, house gravy, broccoli, whole grain roll, choice of lentils and brown rice or roasted vegetables, barley soup, baby kale salad with buttermilk dressing, and banana pudding parfait. The meals are reasonably priced and delivery is free, thanks to the university’s generous support. Unsurprisingly, the response to this incredible program has been ecstatic: the team is selling between 60 to 200 meals per day — depending on the entrée — many of them to elderly folks living alone in the area. “This is so much more than feeding people. This is just this overwhelming outpouring of love. So many seniors are lonely. This is a highlight of their day to have my driver pull up and just wave at them through the window,” says Linda. “We told them originally no tips. They just insisted. They leave envelopes taped on doors; one man set up a table on the porch with flowers and money on it for us!”
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BOXES OF LOVE Meanwhile, Linda had learned that hundreds of international families, part of Andrews international missionary training program, remained stranded in the University Apartments complex by international travel bans and were struggling with food insecurity. When the campus first shut down, she took those Farm to Fork beans and added potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, peppers, tomatoes and more to create pantry boxes. “Nothing fancy, just good wholesome food. We passed out over 350 boxes, gratis of AU Dining Services,” she says proudly. Later, Linda realized that there was something she could do with those unasked-for tips from AUeats — and more. She knew the campus apartment families needed additional and broader support, such as diapers, formula, and staples. She spearheaded a program that allowed families to sign up for assistance and sponsors to donate the needed funds or the items directly. The program now has close to 30 sponsors — many of them Bon Appétit employees and Andrews University employees — and continues to grow. People can also make a one-time donation, anonymously or not, through Dining Services. Linda worked with Bon Appétit’s produce distributor, Piazza Produce, to create a fruit box she could purchase for $20, and a vegetable one for $30 — Piazza’s cost. Linda uses the sponsorship money and the AUeats tips to order the food boxes, then Andrews’ campus security delivers them over to the apartment complexes. To date, they have delivered more than 300 of these fresh food boxes!
Executive Chef Berta Arroyo’s soft tacos de soy carne for AUeats, with posole, smoky guajillo rice, frijoles refritos, salsa de molcajete, apple and lime-glazed fruit salad
“I happened to be in the van when one of my team members delivered supplies to a family he was sponsoring [anonymously]. The father ran out of the apartment and was so excited he began to jump up and down! There was such rejoicing and tears!” recalls Linda. “I will never forget it as long as I live.” “Many thanks, and God’s blessings, for Chef Linda, her Bon Appétit/ Dining Services team…and their heart of mission,” wrote President Dr. Andrea Luxton in one of her newsletters publicizing the program.
“IF NOT US … WHO?” President Luxton is not Linda’s only fan. AUeats Manager Berta Arroyo wrote to Bon Appétit headquarters out of her own accord to make sure that everyone knew about Linda’s leadership during this unprecedented time. “I have seen Chef Linda [Linda was the executive chef before she became general manager] go above and beyond for everyone, but in this pandemic I have seen her raise up like never before. She has taken this project of helping families in need to heart; I have seen her work long hours, make millions of calls, send thousands of emails, and create connections with these families just to make sure every single one has food on their table,” Berta wrote. “I have seen her put money out of her own pocket to buy food for families as we don’t have enough sponsors. I have seen her making sure that every single
AUeats Executive Chef Berta Arroyo and Gazebo Retail Store Manager Angela Martinache preparing AUeats orders for deliver
person gets fed, even if it takes us going back to the kitchen to make them a meal. I’m so proud and blessed to work by her side.” Linda brushes off all praise: “You just come in and do what must be done, without even giving it a second thought. I am grateful to be able to serve during these most challenging days. If not us … who?” — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
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VITALIZE ...our guests’ sense of wellness by offering relevant of-the-moment resources to support well-being
STAR CHEFS AND NONPROFITS HELP SPREAD THE WELLNESS WORD
Andrea Nguyen, author of the best-selling “Vietnamese Food Any Day” and others, fired up some char siu chicken and “any day Viet pickles” for a Memorial Day tie-in
OVER THE SUMMER, when many of Bon Appétit’s cafés had to close or were operating with minimal staff, guests were hungry for cooking inspiration at home. The Bon Appétit HQ team reached out to the company’s nonprofit partners and to several recent Star Chef authors (who had shared recipes and signed cookbooks at in-person café events) to serve as guest curators for the Bon Appétit blog for the week, contributing recipes and links. For 18 weeks, on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, new blog posts went up to be shared across all Bon Appétit’s active social media accounts. Among the contributors were: X Monterey
Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch team, who shared seafood prep tips and a recipe for broiled sockeye salmon with citrus glaze X Jennifer DiFrancesco and Josephine Morris from the Humane Society of the United States, who provided reasons to eat more plants along with a recipe for garbanzo bean sliders with aquafaba “mayo”
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X Amy
Kimoto-Kahn, the author of Simply Ramen and Simply Hot Pots, who blogs at easypeasyjapanesey.com, chose her greenvegetable nabe, “the perfect hot pot for those times when you need a good dose of heart-healthy green vegetables” X Food What?!, a youth empowerment and food justice organization, which served up rainbow fried rice in a fun video from their Santa Cruz farm X Nikki Cooper, the second-generation owner of Two Jack’s Nik’s Place, a family-owned restaurant in San Francisco serving southern comfort food and fresh seafood since 1977, who shared her recipe for Two Jack’s Nik’s Place salmon and crab croquettes The Quarantine Culinary Engagement series, as it was called internally, ended up being a terrific way to nourish our guests with healthy recipes while spreading the word about both the values Bon Appétit shares with these organizations and some terrific cookbooks, blogs, and restaurants! — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
FOOD FOR YOUR WELL-BEING AND OTHER WELLNESS ACTIVITIES GO VIRTUAL IN THESE STRESSFUL TIMES, guests are looking to us for guidance to build healthy habits and achieve wellness goals. Bon Appétit’s Wellness team is creating a toolkit of relevant digital content and modified wellness events so that we can support our guests’ well-being no matter where they are. Our registered dietitian nutritionists have adapted the Food for Your Well-Being program to provide wellness education without depending on in-café events, using in-house-developed videos and other digital content, along with instructions for self-guided activities. Menu tie-ins are suggested for cafés that are serving guests in person, with home-based ideas for others. In addition, Wellness “takeovers”
on the Café Bon Appétit website network continue to use the most valuable real estate on the site — headers, Stay Fresh articles, and recipe shares — to put hot wellness topics right in front of visitors. The Love Food and Cooking Is An Art and a Science series are also both being adapted for the new virtual-engagement era, turned into videos with optional localized activities that can accompany them. Despite the many and ever-changing restrictions on breaking bread together in person, food can still be an effective vehicle for education, connection, and pleasure. — Submitted by Terri Brownlee, Director of Wellness and Nutrition
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FEDELE’S KITCHEN CABINET TAKES ON WELLNESS AND HITS A PLANT-FORWARD BULLSEYE
Korean barbecued jackfruit in a bao bun with purple cabbage slaw, radish, and toasted sesame served at Dreamworks Animation
WHEN CEO FEDELE BAUCCIO convened his Kitchen Cabinet to help him re:invent the company, he knew that keeping the company’s commitments to healthy cooking and plant-rich menus had to be a vital part of that strategy. He tapped Dreamworks Animation Executive Chef Patrick Youse (who is also a member of the Bon Appétit Plant-Forward Culinary Collaborative taskforce) and Bill Telepan, the new culinary director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to help inspire their fellow culinarians to make healthy items the easiest, most appealing choice for guests.
The second half of the webcast concentrated on how to increase plant-forward menuing — not moving to wholly vegetarian or vegan, but asking meat to take a much smaller role. During the COVID-19 crisis, there are many health, environmental, and business reasons that dovetail for doing so, Patrick reiterated, sharing some of his own story of weight loss and renewed health thanks to shifting toward a plant-based diet. He introduced everyone to the concept of the PlantForward Bulls-Eye, recommending chefs start with a vegan or vegetarian entrée (versus an animal protein), adding more vegetable and/or whole-grain sides, and then pausing to ask themChefs have many tricks up their white sleeves, The plant-forward bulls-eye selves whether it worked as a complete meal — would Bill and Patrick reminded everyone in a companywide guests be sated, and satisfied? If not, only then should they webcast, from making sure that vegetables, whole grains, and consider perhaps adding some animal protein into the mix. lean or plant-based proteins are the first options guests see as they approach a station or on the online ordering system, and stocking “Anything you might do to meat — marinating, grilling, smoking, healthier items and unsweetened beverages at eye level in any grab searing, charring, roasting — also works for vegetables. In fact, and go coolers, to explaining how important it is to name their vegetables might say, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better,’” Patrick healthy items as lovingly as they might their comfort ones. Bill told the chefs. He closed by showing just how easy it is to build walked the audience through all the tools at their disposal, tossing a weekly menu for a station using the bullseye strategy. “You just out truly mouthwatering menu ideas as he went, like Patrick’s Korean need to show plants the same love that we’ve traditionally shown barbecued jackfruit in a bao bun with purple cabbage slaw, radish, meat.” — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications and toasted sesame.
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WELLNESS EXPERTS TAKE TO THE (VIRTUAL) STAGE
Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Maisie Ganzler speaking on a panel at the Culinary Institute of America’s 2020 Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit
WHEN CONFERENCES MOVED ONLINE, so did Bon Appétit’s expert speakers — without skipping a beat. Terri Brownlee, MPH, RD, LDN, Bon Appétit’s director of nutrition and wellness, was invited to speak during the 2020 annual Menus of Change, an initiative from The Culinary Institute of America and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She was part of a panel called “Effective Change Management: Insights from the Noncommercial Foodservice Sectors” and asked to focus on plant-forward dining. Terri shared a pictorial tour of just a few of the inspirational ideas that have grown from the talented chefs behind the grassroots efforts of Bon Appétit’s Plant-Forward Culinary Collaborative, from vegan cashew cheese sauce and blending techniques to new GO and plantforward station concepts. The presentation garnered comments including many “looks delicious” and “please send me some of those nachos” from the more than 300 attendees.
A few weeks later, Terri participated on a FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education) panel on “College Dining During COVID-19,” discussing changes in college dining and how dining teams must continue to support students with food allergies. Parents and students were interested to understand more about how they will be able to dine safely when returning to campus in the fall. Terri was able to reassure parents that Bon Appétit will continue to serve students safely through staff training, individual communication with students, special meal preparation, and the implementation of the new SimplyOASIS concept — a to-go platform built around meals made from single ingredients that exclude the Major 8 allergens. — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
At the Culinary Institute of America’s 2020 Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit, Chief Strategy & Brand Officer Maisie Ganzler joined Google’s Global Workplace Programs Director Michiel Bakker to discuss “Building a More Resilient Plant-Forward Supply Chain.” The long-scheduled topic was all the more important given the supply chain challenges brought on by COVID-19.
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CATER Creative menus and innovative delivery and service styles Our Ready to Go branded catering concept reinvents catering service to flex with the shift from large-scale galas and events to smaller group gatherings and meetings for those working together in different ways. New Ready to Go service styles include individual servings, packaged meals, lunch and breakfast boxes, bento boxes, tray service, and touchless delivery. Our teams continue to bring creative menus and planning services along with the attention to detail that has long been the signature of Bon Appétit catering.
Bon Appétit’s GO catering packaging is eye-catching and fun
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Whether it’s ready-to-eat or ready-to-reheat, catering from Bon Appétit has been thoughtfully planned and packaged
ORDER
Deploying technology for effortless, contact-free transactions
We’re customizing technology plans based on each client’s business needs, focusing on thoughtful solutions that work with their infrastructure and your community.
LAUNCHING WASTE NOT™ 2.0
A Morrison Healthcare chef demonstrates Waste Not™ 2.0 in action
DESPITE THE PANDEMIC, Bon Appétit continues to fight food waste — and has been joined at a global scale by our parent company, Compass Group. Compass has adopted Bon Appétit’s proprietary waste-tracking tool On Track, rebranded it as Waste Not™ 2.0, and made it available to all the Compass sectors. Originally designed by an expert Bon Appétit team of chefs and waste specialists, Waste Not™ 2.0 makes it easy to track and reduce waste without impacting the daily operations. The patent-pending program uses tablets to effectively track waste throughout the day and provides real time data that helps all back of house associates better understand and identify opportunities to prevent and reduce waste. Bon Appétit client Snap Inc. was an early adopter of Waste Not™ 2.0 and has managed to steadily cut their overproduction food waste by more than half since they started tracking with the program over a year ago. Waste Not helped the team better nail down their production numbers and more fully utilize their ingredients. For example, now when they cut vegetables like zucchini, the chefs are more conscious of not wasting any bit of it — and finding ways to
utilize all their whole vegetables to their fullest. For a team that was already quite conscious about sustainability, it was overwhelming to think about how to increase efficiency and reduce waste among three cafés and a warehouse! Waste Not™ 2.0 has been so helpful in shedding light on the opportunities to prevent and reduce waste even further than what they were already doing before the program was launched. The team has used Waste Not™ 2.0 to track both kitchen and guest plate waste, as well as keep tally of the wholesome and excess food they’ve donated with their local hunger relief nonprofit, Bible Tabernacle. When COVID-19 hit earlier this year, Snap Inc. was able to track and donate 1,261 pounds of food for donation in their local Venice, CA, community in February and March alone, saving all that precious food from getting wasted at such a critical time. When asked about Waste Not, Snap Inc.’s General Manager John Leone said, “I’m really glad we have this program in place. I always knew we should and could be tracking waste but was overwhelmed at how to do it. This program made it so easy!” — Submitted by Claire Cummings, Waste Programs Manager
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NEXT-GEN CAFÉ BONAPP RELEASED WHEN THE PANDEMIC STRUCK, the Bon Appétit web development team immediately got to work retooling Café BonApp, its mobile ordering solution, for the new era. Café BonApp 2.0 offers a roster of seamlessly integrated features that will offer ease for your employees and efficiency for our operations. — Submitted by Claire Cummings, Waste Programs Manager
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BOTS Automated food preparation and delivery, with a fun “ from the future” factor We’ve long loved food robots because they increase the speed of service, extend hours of operation, rebalance labor costs, and offer efficient customization — plus they’re cool! Now more than ever, robots can offer solutions that efficiently meet shifting business needs.
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Jane Black, The New York Times, July 13, 2020
BY BECKY VUKSTA’S CALCULATIONS, the new socially distanced dining-hall setup at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., will serve 12 students a minute, or 720 students per hour. Not bad, but still not fast enough to feed the school’s 2,700 students in the rush between classes. So Ms. Vuksta, Furman’s director of auxiliary services, has added two grab-and-go meal stations (one that can accommodate 60 students per hour and another that can handle 180). She also plans a pop-up restaurant outside the main library that will serve street food from around the world, for students and especially staff and faculty, who as a safety precaution will not be allowed to visit the main dining hall.… …Before the pandemic, Bon Appétit had installed robots on campuses across the country, including Blendid robots to make custom smoothies; “Sally,” a robot that whips up made-to-order salads; and a so-called pizza A.T.M., which can serve up a hot pie in three minutes. But what was seen as fun and futuristic, a spokeswoman for the company said, is now being looked at as a way to reduce pressure on employees who will be busier than ever with additional serving duties and constant cleaning.
transitions since campuses shut down in March. Her first task was to become an expert in various types of personal protective equipment, and where to obtain them. She has spent the last few months investigating new types of equipment, such as no-touch coffee urns, and all manner of sustainable packaging. Ms. Ganzler said the physical and safety changes are the easier parts of the shift. “There’s nothing magical about putting food into a portioned cup. What we can’t lose sight of is the fundamental thing that food delivers on college campuses,” she said. “It’s part of ‘adulting,’ where kids learn to make their own food choices or express their identity through food. How we achieve all that within the restrictions is a more interesting question than whether you will have prewrapped silverware.” To that end, Bon Appétit dining managers are continuing to emphasize hospitality — signs at service stations read “Allow us to serve you,” rather than an alternative such as “No mask. No Service” — and offering online programming. Butler University in Indianapolis has devised food trivia contests, and at Washington University in St. Louis, a chef has offered virtual cooking demos for dishes like mushroom risotto.…
Maisie Ganzler, Bon Appétit’s chief strategy and brand officer, has been overseeing these
To read the full story, go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/dining/college-food-coronavirus.html
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SOURCEFUL
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Our combination of national and local supply chains offers flexibility and stability
I’ve loved working with the Bon Appétit team in their passion for farm-grown ingredients. Having a farm at Mills College has been an incredible gift in providing fresh produce, flowers, and herbs for the campus. The farm is also an outdoor learning laboratory where students get to tend the land and learn how to produce the food that they will later see in their meals. It has been especially rewarding seeing our farm-grown blackberries become a Bon Appétit smoothie, or freshly harvested zephyr summer squash and green zebra tomatoes adorn their delicious pizzas! It is such a sensible cycle, from campus farm to campus fork, and I can’t wait to see Bon Appétit teach some cooking workshops in our new outdoor farm kitchen! — Julia Dashe, Mills Farm Manager
Mills College Farm Manager Julia Dashe, President Elizabeth L. Hillman, and Bon Appétit General Manager Merilee McCormick meet at the farm (Photo: Bart Nagel)
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RALEIGH-DURHAM BON APPÉTIT ACCOUNTS HELP FARM TO FORK PARTNER TAKE AWAY THE BLUES
Fuqua School of Business Farm to Fork supplier Celine Koropchak tends to her blueberry bushes at Phantom Phoenix Farm in Oxford, NC
THE PANDEMIC HAS HIT restaurants and food service businesses hard — and it has also had a devastating effect on the vendors that serve them. When Celine Koropchak of Phantom Phoenix Farms in Oxford, NC, began reaching out to her regular clients about her annual summer blueberry deliveries, she was met with a painful silence. Luckily, Bon Appétit Executive Chef Toby Pace at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, NC, found a way to answer this Farm to Fork vendor’s call. Although operations at Fuqua were still closed, the Bon Appétit team committed to taking almost all of Celine’s 2020 harvest. The news was a huge relief for Celine, who founded Phantom Phoenix Farm in 2006 with 600 bushes she’d grown from seedlings after retiring from her career as a medical researcher at Duke University. Since then, she’s passionately tended to her crop, coaxing harvests of plump, sweet blueberries without relying on pesticides. Toby received the first delivery of 105 pounds of blueberries in July and will continue taking Celine’s deliveries weekly until her harvest is complete. He is bagging each delivery and quick-freezing the berries
at Fuqua until an opportunity arises to serve them to guests or distribute them to the nearby SAS and Citrix corporate campuses. Toby and the other Bon Appétit teams are thrilled to be able to help ensure the survival of a local farm that has been a valued Bon Appétit Farm to Fork partner for more than five years. — Submitted by Toby Pace, Executive Chef
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TWITTER TEAM BRINGS THE PRODUCE TO THE PEOPLE WHEN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA went into COVID-19 shutdown, shuttering most Bon Appétit corporate cafés, it dramatically impacted dozens of small farmers as well. Bon Appétit spends millions of dollars on local produce from its Bay Area Farm to Fork vendors annually. Bryce Yee, a Bon Appétit senior executive chef at Twitter, wanted to help. He connected with Lou Fierro from Halls Organics, who he knew could pull together produce from multiple local farms, including Coke Farms, Suprema Farms, Global Farms, and Halls Farms. They created a special produce box that Tweeps could order. The fresh fruit, greens, herbs, and vegetables get picked over the weekend and brought to San Francisco, and the Bon Appétit team delivers them to people’s homes by Tuesday. The box program has continued and had many successful runs. “This lets people stay at home and support local small business without
The Bon Appétit @ Twitter team (aka @bonappetweet) with their first veggie box delivery
needing to go to high-populated grocery stores,” said Bryce. “Everyone is thrilled with how fresh and delicious the food is.” — Submitted by Bonnie Powell, Director of Communications
SUPPORTING CHASE CENTER’S TASTE MAKERS — VIRTUALLY
The Warriors teamed up with UberEats and Chase Center Taste Makers (such as pizza maker Tony Gemignani, right) to donate meals to essential workers including the San Francisco Fire Department (left)
WHEN CHASE CENTER, the 18,064-seat, privately financed sports and entertainment arena in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, opened last fall, its concession stands and kiosks were crowded with hungry, excited Golden State Warriors fans and concert goers. Most of those eateries were new outposts of popular local restaurants, food trucks, and bakeries. When COVID-19 shut down San Francisco, the Chase Center Taste Makers (as these local food partners are called) had to pivot their business plans to a takeout and delivery business model to survive. Bon Appétit, the Warriors, and Chase Center rallied around Old Skool Café, Bakesale Betty, Sarap Shop, Sam’s Chowder House, and the other Taste Makers by broadcasting the details of their new offerings through videos across their collective audience channels on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more. The Warriors lent their video team’s expertise to direct and assemble the moving short videos from images and footage shot by the Taste Makers themselves, with behind-the-scenes help from Bon Appétit. The Old Skool Café video was viewed more than 5,000 times! And Chase Center also pulled together corporate partnerships to support the Taste Makers by buying their meals for donation to front-line workers and others.
“Because of the promo, we sold out for the week!” reported Kristen Brillantes, cofounder of the Filipino fusion food truck Sarap Shop. “We also got a message from a local school that saw the promo through Chase and bought gift cards in bulk for all their teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week. We saw an 18% uptick in interest for our Work From Home Meal Kits! So much love in the club!!” Taste Makers who utilized third-party delivery systems, specifically the Uber Eats platform, were included in the Warriors Golden Giveback Promotion. Those who ordered using Uber Eats when a Taste Maker was featured paid no delivery fee and their dollar amount was matched in meal donations to essential workers up to $5,000. Tony Gemignani of Tony G’s Pizza made over 100 pizzas for his donation order. “We are grateful for this partnership; it was a boost that our business needed during these trying times,” he said. The Chase Center, Bon Appétit, and the Warriors teams are committed to keeping the Taste Makers in the forefront of their audience’s minds, reminding everyone to eat, shop, and support local businesses as much as possible. — Submitted by Jessica Rohrig, Marketing Manager
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COMMIT 1 2
Thank you for your flexibility and ingenuity during these topsy-turvy times. I know it has been a challenge to get your operation up and running in such a short time. We couldn’t have made this work without you and your team and your commitment to the college. — Panayiotis Kanelos, President, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD
5
Best decision we ever made for our students. Bon Appétit is an amazing partner that jumped on this situation from the beginning…We will have homecooked, locally sourced food, made to order in individual packaging. — Marc Mathews, Vice President for Finance and Business, Transylvania University, Lexington, KY
We value you as a partner. We’re here to serve your community’s unique needs, each and every day. As your requirements change, we’ll adapt. You have our promise.
We will re:invent food service together. 3 4
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I just wanted to let you know how impressed I was with the changes to the dining set up and the safeguards and options put in place for the students [at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle]. Dropped my kid off today and grabbed a bite at the café. Food was tasty and the site was immaculate! It’s obvious how much work Cornish has done to make oncampus school happen, and as a parent I am so grateful for the efforts by the dining service to make it a reality. — Amber Richardson, Mom of Noah Terrell ’23
1. The berry berry salad from Concordia University 2. A happy Transylvania University student 3. Denison University’s bao buns with Korean-inspired beef, pork shoulder, and sweet chili tofu 4. Cornish College of the Arts Executive Chef Kenny Oglesby 5. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Food Service Worker Juleigh James 6. Butler University students enjoying a watermelon pop pop-up
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