On Tuesday, the chef at Tri-State University will join more than 400 Bon Appétit Management Co. chefs in reaching new heights of culinary creativity to put the local on the plate in their cafes. Over 200,000 diners across the nation will be served a lunch made of ingredients sourced 100 percent—from fruit to flour—within a 150-mile radius of the cafe kitchen. Welcome to the third-annual Eat Local Challenge, the largest coordinated national event to focus awareness on the importance of local food.

See what TSU chef Benjamin Grubisich is doing to make this year’s challenge the best ever. Along with general manager Tom O’Brien, he started the new school year by moving the staff into a world-class facility, Whitney Commons, located in the new University Center. Overcoming the challenges of moving, changing and adding new vendor suppliers, hiring extra staff, and training current and new staff on all new state-of- the-art equipment weeks before student arrivals, Grubisich still maintained the Bon Appetit standards for the farm-to-fork program.

Join him as they barrel down a country road toward the farms that raised the best apples, tomatoes, sweet corn, fresh herbs, green beans, peppers, and cantaloupe. Diners will taste how the search translates into inspiration, and how gorgeous and unique local ingredients became creative, seasonal, delicious entrees, beverages and desserts.

Join Grubisich for an amazing lunch. Among the many tastes will be whole roasted organic chicken with gypsy pepper honey glaze, garlic-roasted butternut squash, and char-broiled sweet corn. These are only a few of the many wonderful tastes to enjoy grown right here in the northeast Indiana community.

The chicken is from a local farm in Orland, Miller’s Poultry. Corn and squash are from Baker’s Acres in Angola. The honey and garlic are from the Farmer’s Market in Fort Wayne.

Now in its third successful year, the Eat Local Challenge was launched in 2005 to illustrate the importance of eating foods grown in the local community. With consumers focused on organic food and the carbon footprint, a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of greenhouse gases, the Eat Local Challenge will tangibly illustrate how far food travels to reach the average American plate, and what the effects of choosing local foods are on the local economy and landscape.

“As a chef, the Eat Local Challenge not only spurs me to new levels of creativity, but because local food comes from local people with local stories, the search for ingredients becomes a treasure hunt with an amazing reward—great food with a great back-story,” Grubisich said.

For more about the Eat Local Challenge, see www.bamco.com/website/eatlocal.html.

Bon Appétit Management Co. is an on-site restaurant company offering full food service management to corporations, universities, and specialty venues. Bon Appétit is committed to sourcing local, sustainable food supplies for all cafés throughout the country. A pioneer in environmentally sound sourcing policies, Bon Appétit has developed programs with Environmental Defense, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, and other leading conservation organizations. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Bon Appétit has cafés in 28 states, in organizations like Oracle Corp., American University and the Getty Center.