If there was ever a management company that earned its reputation one meal at a time, that distinction would have to belong to Bon Appétit.

It is a company with a heartbeat that emanates from the kitchen, but a kitchen that operates in full view of the customer. The firm’s indelible trademark—a culture of fresh food, authentically prepared and created for each account by dedicated chefs empowered to customize and deliver it—has redefined the high end of food expectations in the managed service environment.

Over the 15 years since its founding, Bon Appétit has evolved from a boutique, regional catering company into what many believe has been one of the most influential players in the onsite foodservice community. In 2001, it had sales of close to $300 million in 21 states, making it the seventh largest foodservice management company in FM’s “Top 50.” Still, it retains the culture of a much smaller firm, focusing almost exclusively on business dining and foodservice at private colleges and universities.

Above all, Bon Appétit seems to exist as a culture of chefs, cultivated and nurtured by co-founder Fedele Bauccio, who has clearly enjoyed a unique role as both chief executive and something of an executive chef himself. Company employees all have a story to tell about a hands-on visit he has made to their kitchen.

“There isn’t a chef in this company who can fool me with shortcuts,” Bauccio is fond of saying. “I grew up in the kitchen and have always been a food nut. Being Italian doesn’t hurt, either.”

One is tempted to categorize such remarks as image-building hyperbole. But the feeling is tempered by Bauccio’s insistence that you judge Bon Appétit’s product by onsite visits rather than by his word.

“The trade press frequently emphasizes the look of the café, the design issues,” he says. “Many of our accounts do have wonderful cafés, but in this business you just as often have to operate in older facilities. We want your attention on the food. If your attention is there, the facility is only a secondary concern.”

The story of Bon Appétit could easily be a business school case study illustrating the power of an entrepreneur’s vision to focus first a company culture, and then a major business enterprise. In retrospect, that is not surprising. Bauccio and many other individuals involved in Bon Appétit’s formation (including Ernie Collins, who would soon become his partner) all shared a common heritage rooted in the culture of an equally enterprising contract company from an earlier era—the Saga Corporation.

Long an industry pace-setter, Saga’s saga was coming to an end in 1986. Marriott Corporation, then on an acquisition binge, had negotiated a deal to acquire it, a precipitating factor that spawned the original partnership between Bauccio and Collins. Both men were looking at a future in which their positions were about to disappear.

Although most of his 25 years with Saga had been on the contract side, Bauccio in 1986 was serving as president of its specialty division, which consisted of a number of commercial restaurant chains and some hotel foodservice operations Saga had acquired in a diversification effort several years earlier. Marriott had announced its intention to sell that division off, so Bauccio was looking to start a new career. Collins was in a similar situation. As corporate counsel, his was one of several positions due to be eliminated because of duplication at Marriott corporate offices.

Bon Appétit co-founders Fedele Bauccio and Ernie Collins, outside the entrance to the company’s corporate offices in Palo Alto.

“Looking ahead, my alternative was to look for another general counsel position. That simply didn’t appeal to me,” says Collins.

What did begin to appeal to him was Bauccio’s idea of starting a new company that could offer a more customized kind of foodservice than that available from other management companies at the time.

Then, an unusual opportunity presented itself. “I met the owner of a small catering company with a wonderful name and a great reputation for catering in the field,” Bauccio recalls today. “He could go to a warehouse and turn a catered meal into a terrific event by doing display cooking on site.”

“I went to some of his events and saw a chance to do the same thing—not as an event caterer, but in the cafeteria lines where I had spent my earlier career. The owner was looking to sell the business, so Ernie and I raised the money and bought the company. And that was how the Bon Appétit we know today started out.”