Claire Cummings likes to tell people she handles everything and anything related to waste—except porta-potties.
“A lot of the things we deem waste are only waste because of poor actions leading to that,” says Cummings, Bon Appétit Management Company’s first waste programs manager. “What I’m doing is enabling the company and our chefs to make better choices, take responsible actions, and make sure things get utilized to their fullest potential.”
Cummings, 27, began her tenure at the Palo Alto, California-based company—which operates and caters events for some 650 cafés, universities, museums, and event venues across the United States—as a West Coast Fellow in 2012, before the company created her position in 2013. Since then, Cummings has doubled the company’s food-recovery programs, helped develop kitchen waste-tracking systems, and created Imperfectly Delicious Produce—a program that has rescued more than 3 million pounds of ugly and unwanted fruits and vegetables.
Cummings notes that one of the biggest challenges for event planners is not knowing the exact amount of people who will walk through the door, which in turn makes it hard to predict the amount of food to provide. “It’s culturally unacceptable to run out of food, so inevitably that goes totally against preventing waste,” she says. “I try to figure out how to manage those realities of the industry while maintaining this commitment to sustainability.”
Solutions the company uses include bringing out food gradually rather than all at once, providing reusable to-go boxes, and labeling waste bins more clearly.
Says Cummings: “Beautiful displays of food that don’t rely on bountiful amounts is a really good technique that allows us to bring out food as it’s needed.”
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Correction: The original version of this story listed the incorrect amount of unwanted produce that the Imperfectly Delicious Produce program has rescued. BizBash regrets the error.
