Bon Appétit Management Company Takes Action

This summer, Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO) announced an ambitious new climate change policy: a commitment to reducing emissions by 38%, per calorie of food by 2030. The initiative aligns with the science-based criteria of the World Resources Institute and objectives outlined by the Paris Agreement, which seeks to prevent global warming. It also builds on work BAMCO started in 2007 with its Low Carbon Diet program, which was amplified in 2015 with the Low-Carbon Lifestyle.

“We’ve been committed to fighting climate change for almost 15 years. We’re heartened that others are now recognizing the connection between the food system and the climate, but in 2021 the urgency for solutions is much stronger than it was in 2007,” says Chief Executive Officer Fedele Bauccio. “Climate change is both an environmental and a social justice issue, so it’s of critical concern for us as a company and for our clients.”

Because of BAMCO’s bold climate commitments, many of their clients have asked for assistance in meeting their own deeper goals. Chief Strategy & Brand Officer Maisie Ganzler anticipated that their clients would require a high level of flexibility and customization to support their own commitments.

Ganzler’s team gathered a suite of solutions to offer clients a flexible roadmap to amplify emissions tracking and reduction practices. BAMCO’s proprietary Food Standards Dashboard--already set up to synthesize a complex set of sustainability and purchasing data into an easy-to-read snapshot of an account’s compliance with a wide variety of sustainability and wellness commitments--now delivers World Resources Institute (WRI)-compatible data-tracking to illustrate where greenhouse gas emissions are most impactful in an operation.

“By using WRI’s globally recognized framework for emissions calculations and integrating that data into a dashboard that our operators use every day, we can easily give our clients a snapshot of the impacts of their program and then work toward solutions together,” says Ganzler. Through the Dashboard, BAMCO has tracked company-wide red-meat and cheese consumption since 2007, with an aggressive target of less than one ounce per-guest, per-meal for beef and less than 2.5 ounces for all meat, poultry and seafood across the business.

In 2019, the company also convened a Plant-Forward Culinary Collaborative (PFCC) – a group of chefs tasked with creating plant-forward resources for the culinary staff – to work with the company’s wellness team to conduct regional plant-forward trainings that help move menus away from carbon-intensive meat and cheese, and toward plants.

“Data capture and reporting are important for making changes that will achieve goals and measure success,” says Ganzler. “Putting WRI data at our operators’ fingertips is essential, but data alone isn’t enough. We recognized back in 2007 that mitigating climate change was going to require a culture shift, which is why over the years, we’ve also dedicated resources to training, staff education, creating community, and fostering culinary creativity with our Low Carbon Lifestyle program and the PFCC. This isn’t just a numbers game, it’s about cultural commitment and behavior change.”