The Bon Appetit Management Company runs 400 cafes across America, feeding more than 80 million mouths every year, in organisations as diverse as Yahoo and the Seattle Art Museum.

The company has always pushed a policy of trying to use ethical suppliers and practices, and their new initiative will see the firm both cutting its own emissions while encouraging its customers to follow their example.

The company’s ‘Low Carbon Diet’ will see Bon Apetit reduce their beef consumption by 25% while ceasing to serve food and bottled water imported from outside the USA. The catering giant will also conduct an energy audit on all their kitchen equipment, will serve only fruits and vegetables that are in season and will invite their customers to calculate the carbon cost of their food consumption.

Explaining the thinking behind the move, Bon Appetit director, Helene York, said: “It is insane to sit down to lunch in Los Angeles and drink water that has travelled 5,000 miles from Fiji. We are scrutinizing our own food habits to reduce our carbon footprint as a company, and we are helping our guests do the same on an individual level.”

In addition to addressing its environmental impact, Ms Yorke went on to add that Bon Appetit also represents a $400 million company making radical and groundbreaking decisions. “Our Low Carbon Diet gets to the heart of an issue that has been conspicuously absent from the global warming conversation.”

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