The idea for the EDIBLES program originated from a community discussion in May 2013 at IAU Symposium 297 “The Diffuse Interstellar Bands”, organized by Harold Linnartz, Nick Cox and Jan Cami. This discussion was about what the future needs are to make progress in DIB research, and was summarized in a paper that is part of the conference proceedings: “A Road Map for the Identification of the Diffuse Interstellar Band Carriers” (direct download here: 2014IAUS..297..412C). Further discussions about the observational needs described in that paper led us to propose a Large Program using VLT/UVES.
The original EDIBLES proposal was submitted for ESO period 93A, but was not approved on technical grounds. We resubmitted an improved proposal for period 94A, and that proposal (edibles_wasp3_submitted) was accepted as a filler program, with Nick Cox as the Principal Investigator.