RE:ACQUAINT | VIRTUAL ENGAGEMENT

RE:ACQUAINT

A warm welcome that communicates care and safety

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 chef-led demos, recipes for guests’ favorites, virtual trivia contests, and more.

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.

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 conversa tion 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: 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 record 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 the vegetables in their fridges.”

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

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 inspira tion, 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.

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.) 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.

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 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. Executive Chef Terri Wu and Sous Chef Janeth Estrada donned masks in the Oracle Kitchen to take almost 100 Oracle view ers 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.

Members of the Texas National Guard show off their lunches provided by Bon Appétit

TURTLE CREEK TEAM FEEDS TEXAS WORKERS CARING FOR THE COMMUNITY

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 manag ers, 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

The Andrews University team in Berrien Springs, MI: Executive Chef Berta Arroyo, General Manager Linda Brinegar, and Sous Chef Lance Clark

“THIS IS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST FEEDING PEOPLE”: ANDREWS UNIVERSITY DINING TEAM STEPS UP TO SUPPORT WIDER COMMUNITY

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 sup port), 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 over whelming 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!”

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 inter national 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!

“I happened to be in the van when one of my team members de livered 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 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?”

AUeats Executive Chef Berta Arroyo and Gazebo Retail Store Manager Angela Martinache preparing AUeats orders for deliver