LUCY WOOD

Community Engagement Coordinator

In September 2021, we hired our first Student Community Engagement Coordinator at Whitman College. Lucy Wood ’23, a psychology major, has focused on building Farm to Fork partnerships, identifying opportunities to reduce food waste on campus, enhancing our campus sustainability efforts, and engaging other Whitman students to participate in new programs such as the campus glass recycling program. Additionally, Lucy has invested much of her time in helping maintain the Whitman Organic Garden and has overseen the garden’s chickens - https://www.bamco.com/blog/community-comes-together-at-the-whitmanorganic-garden/.

In April 2022, Lucy was the runner-up for the Governor’s Student Civic Leadership award for her work with Bon Appétit and the Whitman College Glean Team. Governor Jay Inslee and Campus Compact gave the award.

After Lucy graduates, we hope to hire her as our Manager of Community Engagement. In this role, Lucy will recruit and hire her replacement for Student Community Engagement Coordinator. Lucy will continue to guide our efforts at Whitman College and support other accounts in the PNW District.

The Bon App Tit Fellows

The Bon Appétit Fellows program not only touches dozens of our university campuses each year, but it also truly sets us apart as a company. These employees serve as educational and research resources to students and our teams in their region. To become a Fellow, they must have recently graduated from a Bon Appétit campus (ranging from a few months to four years) and have a proven track record of being active in sustainable food areas on their campus.

Our fellows are our all-hands-on-deck resources to activate food education on Whitman’s campus. They help our teams arrange kitchen tours, guest lectures, student group meetings, culinary team meetings, Farm to Fork and Supplier Diversity vendor visits, Healthy Kids events, and more!

 KITCHEN TOURS . Students are amazed to see where the scrambled eggs are made, to watch stock simmering, to see the ingredients we’re cooking with, to walk into a walk-in freezer (it really doesn’t take much to impress!) Kitchen tours get students excited about cooking and make connections with the chefs. They dispel rumors. It’s the ultimate form of transparency – “come see what we do!”

 GUEST LECTURES IN CLASSROOMS . In public health classes, they talk about antibiotics use on animal farms. In science of climate change courses, they talk about Bon Appétit’s Low Carbon Lifestyle program and how food choices matter. In environmental justice classes, they talk about our partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. They find ways to connect what we do to the issues students care about and/or are learning about on campus.

 STUDENT GROUP MEETINGS . Presentations to the student government, meetings with environmentally focused student groups, sustainability directors, real food challenge chapters, food recovery network chapters… you name it!

 HEALTHY KIDS’ EVENTS . Healthy Kids in the Bon Appétit Kitchen is Bon Appétit’s companywide nutrition and culinary education program, created with the goal of educating and empowering children to make healthy food choices for themselves and their communities. Through this program, we’re transforming the kitchens and gardens in which we operate into hands-on classrooms for kids.

 OTHER SPECIAL EVENTS . Presentations, film screenings, cooking classes, coffee tastings, and other creative ways to bring the “story behind the food” to life.