Meet the Bon Appétit Blogger Team

Maisie Greenawalt
Vice President

Having joined the company in 1994, just a year out of college, I’ve grown up at Bon Appétit Management Company. When asked where I learned about sustainable food systems (and I get asked that a lot); the answer is quite simply “here.”

I set my sights on Bon Appétit after reading an article in a trade magazine about the company’s innovative restaurant-style approach to food service (that “aha, I have to work for that company”-moment has left me with a soft spot for PR). I decided to seek out a position anywhere in the company I could. I got my foot in the door as an employee services coordinator and over the ensuing 14 years have been lucky enough to grow and take on responsibility for communications, marketing and culinary strategy.

Being the child of “bohemian” parents who worked in the non-profit sector, my rebellion was going into the business world. I wanted to focus on restaurant service not social service. Yet, the value my parents put on community seeped in somehow and when, in 1999, the Bon Appétit Farm to Fork program was born, a piece of my heritage was awakened.

 In the last nine years, I’ve become an activist in a way I never thought likely. I relish the ability to use Bon Appétit’s purchasing power to make changes in the supply chain and I thrive on the passion I hear from our people when they talk about our company Dream. I take great pleasure in pushing the company forward and proving that a for-profit business can act with both a warm heart and a scientific mind. And, I only cringed slightly when in conversation with Fedele (our ceo) I heard myself quoting my mother’s frequent invocation of the Buddhist Eightfold Path to say my work at Bon Appétit is “Right Livelihood.”

Helene York
Director, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation

There haven’t been farms in Brooklyn for 200 years, but an 8x8 plot shared with another 8 year-old at the Botanic Garden in my hometown introduced me to the taste of fresh produce. I proudly seeded, watered, and plucked every weekend. I’ve long been a vegetable-centric eater, and growing my own or harvesting odd things like gooseberries from my grandparents’ backyard confirmed my view, early on, that supermarkets mostly sell cardboard – content as well as packaging.

My mother didn’t share the same passion – Wednesday featured pork chops, Thursday spaghetti, Friday breaded flounder. I think we ate enough flounder to overfish the species ourselves. I became the principal dinner-maker at aged 14.

Food’s my long-time passion, but I’ve gone from valuing sheer variety to appreciating how food is grown, the challenges of producing it, how to use the whole agricultural product, and treasuring the ripe taste and shape of a product in season. The bulk of my food now comes from a CSA box and daily meal preparation is a welcome mathematical game: to prepare a meal that has leftovers only for the next day’s lunch, using as little energy as possible, that satisfies the flavor critics in the three of us.

I bring personal experiences to my role as director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation. With a mission to educate chefs and consumers about how their food choices affect the global environment (and to catalyze supply chain changes), I look for those connections every day. I am especially proud to be the architect of the Company’s Low Carbon Diet program, whose purpose is to raise awareness of the connection between the food system and climate change reduce emissions associated with Bon Appétit’s food service operations by 25% over five years. 

Katherine Kwon
Communications Project Manager

It’s interesting how things come around full circle. Growing up in a small farm town (Santa Maria, California), the most pressing thing on my to-do list was to escape that place to a bustling and lively Big City, to leave behind all traces of my hometown. However, after 10 years of life in Berkeley, Boston, and San Francisco, I ironically find myself more strongly connected to the farming and agricultural community of Santa Maria than I ever did growing up. No, I didn’t move back to Santa Maria; I became a member of the Bon Appétit Management Company family, where a passion for flavorful, sustainable food seems to be the dominant gene we all have in common.

Although a registered dietitian by training (yes, the biochemical pathways of carbohydrates and triglycerides absolutely fascinate me), I joined the communications department at Bon Appétit as nutrition communications was my emphasis in grad school. Now everyday I have this unique opportunity to not only educate our customers about sustainable and healthful food but also to serve as a nutrition resource to our chefs and managers in the field (who frankly make all the Bon Appétit magic happen). I continue to be a humble student as our chefs teach me about the flavors, textures, and temperatures of their culinary creations. I never imagined I’d be where I am now, doing what I do; but man, is it fun! I mean, I get to bake naan from scratch in a Woodstone oven as part of a culinary training—what a treat!