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South Bay Accent - Aug/Sep 2015

GANZLER WAS FAST-TRACKING IN AN INDUSTRY THAT SHE LOVED BUT IT WASN’T UNTIL SHE MET FEDELE BAUCCIO THAT SHE UNDERSTOOD HER VISION OF COMBINING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WITH FOOD SERVICE WAS VIABLE, ALBEIT NOT AN EASY PATH. Ganzler uses TED Talks, here at 2011’s TEDxFruitvale at Mill College in Oakland, YouTube and social media to evangelize about sustainable food policies. August/September 2015 77 to work in the hospitality industry.” Her first job was “salad girl” at the Dolphin Restaurant on the Municipal Wharf. Before long, she arranged an informational interview with the food service director of the local Holiday Inn. She graduated from Santa Cruz High School in 1989 and headed east, where she earned a degree at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. Ganzler was fasttracking in an industry that she loved, but it wasn’t until she met Fedele Bauccio that she understood her vision of combining social responsibility with food service was viable, albeit not an easy path. Bauccio is co-founder and CEO of BAMCO. In the late 1980s, he and his partner, Ernie Collins, took over what had been a respectable San Francisco catering business called Bon Appétit Catering and began pushing it to new heights. A visionary entrepreneur with a master’s degree in business administration, Bauccio took a hard look into the future and realized that building a food service company around high-quality, sustainable products and selling them to a sophisticated audience was a sound business proposition. In 1999, following a foray with a Silicon Valley hospitality start-up, Ganzler returned to BAMCO. Bauccio encouraged her to follow her vision. Wasting no time, that year she developed the Farm to Fork program, a companywide initiative to buy at least 20 percent of its food from small, local farms within 150 miles. Fast forward to 2005: Ganzler extends the successful Farm to Fork concept and initiates an Eat Local Challenge in which BAMCO chefs across the country are challenged to source local food for every item on their menu for an entire day. The concept was so well received that it has become a popular annual event. “Maisie is a powerhouse,” says Jennifer Kemmerly, director of Seafood Watch at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, whose mission is to promote the purchase of sustainable seafood. “She has always seemed to be ahead of the curve and boldly drives not only Bon Appétit, but the broader food service industry to embrace sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Maisie does not shy away from tough issues.” Sometimes her high-minded vision defies long-held practices, such as her vision to change the way pork is raised for food so that the hogs are treated humanely. In 2013, Ganzler took the stage at TEDxManhattan for a presentation entitled, “How Humane Sausage is Made.” In her YouTube presentation, she defines


South Bay Accent - Aug/Sep 2015
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