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Using psychology, Bon Appetit's VP builds up people, sales
When you ask Debi Benedetti who is responsible for the success and growth at Bon Appetit Management Co.,the vice president of this Menlo _ _Park, Calif.-based foodservice president of this Menlo Park, Calif contractor quickly deflects atcontractor quickly deflects attention away from herself and her company's cofounders, Fedele Bauccio and Ernie Collins.
"We are a very bottom-driven company," she explains. "We believe that our unit people are actually at the top of the company ladder because they are the ones interacting with the customers. They are the ones building sales."
Many human resources executives agree that building up your people is a very smart tack to take, and Benedetti is well schooled in that approach: She has a degree in psychology from Whitworth College, Spokane, Wash. And the strategy has worked. In only 10 years this $5 million start-up has grown to a 100-account contractor that generated $100 million in revenue in 1996.
Focusing primarily on corporations and colleges, Bon Appetit has built an impressive list of high-profile accounts up and down the West Coast, such as Stanford University, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics. Now the company is aiming for steady and fairly rapid growth in other areas of the country.
The company's bold move to reposition itself from a regional to a national company is only one reason why it is going to become harder for Benedetti to hide behind her employees in the coming years. In addition, she is attracting attention personally as the president of the Society for Foodservice Management, as this organization makes some sweeping changes of its own.
There is little question that Benedetti can handle being the center of attention. She was an 18-year veteran of Saga Foodservice before it was bought by Marriott International in 1986, and her first managerial job with the company was in the cafeteria at Saga's headquarters in Menlo Park. Wasn't that just a little unnerving for a kid just out of college, whose professional foodservice experience consisted of four years as a part-time student employee for Saga at Whitworth and two months of management training at Saga's National
Semiconducter account?
"Yeah, it was baptism by fire," admits the perpetually effervescent Benedetti with a...