Bon Appetit Ups its Commitment to Quality and Local by Roasting Sustainable Coffee in House

For corporate food service provider Bon Appetit, high quality, sustainable, local ingredients are at the heart of every dish they make. Based in Palo Alto, Bon Appetit operates more than 1,000 cafes in 33 states for dozens of clients.

District Manager, Ryan Smith, manages a Bay Area location servicing a group of local tech clients. Ryan is a former chef who knows the importance of making everything from scratch.

“We already bake our own bread, cook our own food, we wanted more control over our coffee and where it comes from.”

Farm to Fork meets Farm to Cup.

To serve their mission to source only the best, freshest ingredients from local producers, Bon Appetit created their internal purchasing program, Farm to Fork which sets targets for chefs inside Bon Appetit’s kitchens to source at least 20% of their ingredients from sustainable, local suppliers.

Ryan sees Bellwether as a natural extension of their commitment to sustainability, and small batch, locally made goods. As part of a program to offer unique, sustainable goods to its customers that can’t be sourced elsewhere, Bon Appetit looked to Bellwether as a way to offer their customers sustainable, fresh roasted coffee that was differentiated from their run of the mill coffee vendors.

Bringing the client into the process of selecting their green coffee and flavor profile was really intriguing. To Ryan, choosing Bellwether as their roasting partner was a no brainer. Gas roasting wasn’t an option due to the high labor cost and specialized training required. Now Ryan says anyone on his staff, from delivery drivers to food prep workers, can roast coffee while completing other tasks. His team is roasting 800lbs per week and growing.

Since beginning to roast their own, Bon Appetit has seen a noticeable increase in coffee sales that Ryan is optimistic will continue to rise.

“Bellwether gives us higher quality control. We started roasting our own coffee with Bellwether to help us tell a story. We're hyper local, curated specifically for you ‑ the client. Bellwether allows us to differentiate our product, enhance our commitment to quality sourcing, and helps our clients give their employees a better in‑office experience.“

Looking to the future.

Ryan now sees the potential to add more Bellwether roasters to increase his volume within his current customers, while also exploring ways the Hub can support multiple smaller customers with great roasted coffee from sustainably sourced farms.

By adding multiple software‑enabled, fully automatic roasters to their fleet, companies like Bon Appetit can increase their roasting capacity without incurring added labor costs or expensive equipment upgrades. Roasters that are connected in a Bellwether Hub can act as a single virtual roaster sharing roast profiles, queue roasting schedules automatically, and store production data in one connected account, enabling any business to operate a high volume, small batch artisan roastery with minimal training and effort.

“Coffee roasting has now become a key part of our program to help our environment and our community.”