Bon Appetit is a nationwide food-providing company that was established in the early 1980s. It was originally called Bon Appetit Catering and was based out of San Fransisco, CA. This company was well respected for its food presentation and eventually two men named Fedele Bauccio and Ernie Collins saw this as an opportunity and purchased the company. They changed the name to Bon Appetit Management Company or BAMCO.

Eventually, BAMCO moved toward providing sustainable meals to its clients. On the BAMCO website it is stated

We’re the first in our industry to switch to sustainable seafood, rBGH-free milk, cage-free eggs, humanely raised ground beef, and pork raised without gestation crates (by 2015), and the first to address food’s role in climate change and the issue of farmworkers’ rights. We continue to redefine how we do business as we strive to provide “food service for a sustainable future.”

BAMCO has achieved a large status in the food service industry and continues to grow and strive towards providing sustainable meals made from fresh local produce. BAMCO currently operates at hundreds of locations across the nation at universities such as U. Penn and companies like eBay and Google.

In 2004, CWRU decided to change the way that the on campus dining services work. Before 2004, CWRU provided a similar meal plan to the students in that they were allotted a certain amount of meals a week as well as additional spending cash at a variety of locations. The meal plan was not provided by a separate company however, instead, CWRU had its own dining service that provided food to the students at the dining halls. By 2004, it was clear that the current dining service offered was not approved by the student population and the University itself felt it was time for an upgrade. In 2004 CWRU signed a contract with BAMCO and the establishment of Bon Appetit on campus had begun. Currently, Bon Appetit offers 14 locations on campus to dine. Each one is open at different times of the day and they are distributed across campus. Here is a list of the current dining locations offered by Bon Appetit: 


Bon Appetit and CWRU have attempted to provide much more options to dine on campus in the previous years. They have been successful in doing so, however there has only been a massive increase in expense for students. All of these locations have more options available for purchase with currency instead of meal swipes. CWRU and Bon Appetit are looking to maximize profit from their customers by expanding and providing high quality food and service. However, the flaws in the meal plan which are the wasted meal swipes and meal plan requirements make the meal plans at CWRU unnecessarily expensive and unfair. It is now time to look at some potential solutions to this problem.