The warm glow the nation wore for a magical few weeks this summer may have faded slightly, but the experience of catering at the London Olympic and Paralympic Games still energises foodservice giant Sodexo.
The UK & Ireland arm of the global services provider was responsible for a sizeable chunk of the catering carried out from July 27 and the opening ceremony right through to September 9 and the closing of the Paralympic Games.
During that time a team of 200 experienced regular employees, boosted by the addition of 3,500 new staff members, served 4.5m spectators, fed 15,000 Olympic Park workers and delivered hospitality to 80,000 guests, as well as tickling the taste buds of 10,000 VIPs with a la carte and canapé receptions at the opening and closing ceremonies.
Commercial director Michelle Hanson doesn’t mince her words: “Our organisation has done a fantastic job.”
But not only is it a case of a job well done, but she and colleague Chris John, managing director of Sodexo Prestige, are just as enthusiastic about the benefits the company derived from the experience and how many of the lessons learned have already been built into the way the company operates.
The approach to recruitment, for instance, has changed after Sodexo set up a quirky website – www.bemorethanaspectator.com – to advertise for the extra staff it needed to meet its Olympic catering commitments.
“We couldn’t use a website name that overtly used the word ‘Olympics’ for branding and rights reasons, so we set up a new one to attract applicants. Once they had contacted us through the site to express an interest we could tell them it was about the Olympics. It worked really well,” says John.
“We made a legacy commitment to recruit from London boroughs and, as far as possible, keep them afterwards. That’s a true legacy.
“It was a first job for some of them; they were so pleased and some were even in tears when they were told they were to be part of the Olympics – it meant that much to them.
“We were just looking for basic skills – people who were punctual, smart and enthusiastic – and then they were trained in health and safety, customer interaction.”
Hanson says the prospect really excited the new recruits, who could hardly wait to get started.
As the recruits were guided through their catering training, Sodexo tried another new idea by handing them small, printed pocket cards that summarised important information and facts, for example, about kitchen temperature control.
“These worked well for the new staff,” says John, “Food safety, as you can imagine, was a real concern, because you don’t want to have someone go down with food poisoning. All our processes were designed to remove risk.”
Planning was a major issue and a process that Sodexo made sure was underway very early.
Hanson says: “How much planning was involved? At least a year. For instance, we had groups of potential suppliers in even before we got the contract and set up pre-contracts to buy up all the pigs and lambs within the M25.”
Getting started early helped her manage the three different responsibilities – procurement, logistics and supply chain.
“You just have to integrate all the roles and whenever you talked about one you had to be thinking about the others,” says Hanson. “We had to engage with all the stakeholders, LOCOG, etc, to understand what they wanted, making sure they were clear on expectation, engaging with people you knew you could rely on and making a ‘seamless’ chain of events.
“We got a detailed brief from LOCOG and we spent time testing things to make sure they worked. The systems we developed to cope with the Olympics have been a benefit to the business since in helping to keep things manageable.
“If you can imagine having a giant funnel and you put into it everything you want to do, then out of it you distribute activity through the team to help people understand their part.
“Making sure there was full accountability every step of the way was tremendously important. The desire to make it a success was what drove us.”
There were big outcomes and big benefits as far as Sodexo was concerned.
“To see the whole organisation working as one was incredibly powerful,” says Hanson. “Under pressure we stayed a single team and didn’t fall back into our own little pockets, from suppliers right through to our frontline staff. It was a privilege to be part of it.
“The investment we made in spending time sharing our vision and expectations helped the people we had to rely on.”
The best planning, of course, cannot cover every eventuality and among the problems she admits they did not foresee came when delivery drivers complained to her that their way was blocked by ‘giant beds’ outside the stadium. These turned out to be among the props being prepared for the NHS sequence for the Olympic opening ceremony.
Hanson adds: “What is good about a concentrated event like the Olympic and Paralympic Games is that you have the chance to improve every day, changing things immediately if they are not working.
“For example, the till technology in place allowed us to look at sales live, which allowed us to adjust stock movement in real time, changing an item or the way we were working.
“It helped us deploy resources and the way we responded, and kept us agile. By using the data we could see the demographics of the spectators based on the sales mix.
“Once the Paralympics started, for instance, the demographics changed immediately. There was a much more ‘middle class’ mix that reflected the fact tickets were cheaper and more people bought in their own lunch.
“Knowing that right away allowed us to respond accordingly and cut down the number of volunteers we needed.
“We had to get everything right at the right time if we wanted to exploit the opportunity presented by the Games. The 100m final wasn’t going to be delayed because we weren’t ready.”
John says Sodexo put a lot of effort into forecasting sales and found the results reassuringly accurate.
“We did a lot of forecasting of things like traffic flow and spend per head – all of which were fairly well predicted by our modelling,” he says.
Hanson adds that the notoriously fickle British weather presented planners with a particular dilemma.
“There were few places around the Olympic Park for spectators to shelter from bad weather, so that was one of the unpredictable factors that could have affected sales significantly,” she recalls.
“Overall, though, we were very happy with the weather we had during the Games. It was as good as we could have hoped for.”
And she was happy not only with the weather.
“We watched some our teams grow before our eyes. We saw people gain the equivalent of several years of experience in several weeks.
“Daily debriefs drove the success of the operation; they highlighted problems early on and we were able to change or rectify things.
“For example, we thought our health and safety teams would have fairly routine work patterns, but because the facilities had to be open late and made ready overnight it quickly became clear that night teams were critical to prepare for the next day so we changed the deployment of resources.”
It was not only at the Olympic sites that Sodexo had to take care; it also had 200 London client sites located on roads that were due to be closed at times during the period of the Olympics.
John says: “We met them all and made sure they weren’t inconvenienced.
“The Olympics definitely saw a downturn in our regular business because many clients had encouraged staff to work from home or take their holidays over the Olympic period.
“Our events venue on the river, Bateau London, was 30% down on expectations, for instance, though it quickly bounced back afterwards.”
Not that this year’s Olympics was an entirely new experience.
Says John: “We had previously worked at the Winter Olympics at Vancouver and Whistler, which are similar, it’s just the scale is different.”
And the benefits of the experience are already making themselves felt within the way Sodexo works now.
Hanson says: “Much of the way we worked for the Olympics and what we learned we have continued across our business.
“In terms of food and supply, much of what worked for us was already in place. For instance, two years ago we were the first foodservice company to get MSC accreditation, Red Tractor and to use free range eggs – they were all available before the Olympics.
“In terms of the sourcing mix, all the products we used were well established and embedded in our supply system well in advance.
“However, we did talk to new some new, small and medium businesses that became suppliers and other SMEs which weren’t ready then but have since established a relationship with us that continues. We’re hugely committed to local sourcing.”
On the issue of championing local suppliers, John adds: “We have a framework for chefs to build relationships with new suppliers. They can have the supplies they want.
“We can’t lower our requirements, but what we can do is work with small suppliers to help them meet our standards so that they can be a supplier. We have put resources into this and built up our portfolio of suppliers in the process.”
That is why Sodexo has continued its series of ‘Meet The Buyer’ regional events.
Says John: “Small and medium suppliers are often small, agile and innovative. We find these events work well as a way to meet them and find out about their products.
“Also, we are very aware of the potential problems of forcing them to get into an unsustainable position with spikes in demand, such as catering for events like the Olympics.”
And the Games also reinforced the caterer’s approach to reducing food and packaging waste.
“We used the Olympics to continue our policy of reducing packaging and cutting food waste by using resources better,” says John. “Our mantra is reuse, reduce and recycle – everybody’s got to address this.”
What’s in the future?
When Michelle Hanson looks ahead to 2013, she sees food price inflation as a major issue.
“Commodity prices are driven by the weather and things like changes in legislation affecting the pork industry, as it did eggs in 2011,” she says.
“The challenge is producers matching supply to demand. With our offer we identify the proposition, look to mitigate the effects of the wider economy and the marketing team looks at recipe development and menus to minimise the impact.
“On the trends side of things, consumers want to try new things such as pop-up restaurants.
“In fact we have used these a lot for intensive two-week promotions. They are a very useful ‘quick-to-market’ way to trial new ideas.”
When Sodexo chefs identify trends and ideas that work, she says they have every opportunity to bring them in, as new recipes can be added to the system very quickly for others to use.
The caterer will continue to use big-name chefs to work with its own team, including Pierre Koffman, Alain Ducasse, Cyrus Todiwala and Paul Rankin.
“We brought in Levi Roots to help develop a Reggae Reggae sandwich, which we then used as a signature dish linked to a promotion to drive sales,” she says.
Another major trend, says Chris John, was the growing use of social media.
“Our Facebook following at one university grew to thousands within a matter of days. Our teams follow social media closely and respond to it very quickly,” he says.
“At Everton FC where fans used Facebook and Twitter to say they wanted cold, fizzy beer that was not flat, the team there stopped pouring so many pints in advance to cope with the pre-match and half-time rushes.
“Another example is the Chelsea Flower Show, where we offered visitors a free app that told them the waiting times at all of the food outlets around the site. That proved very popular.”
Hanson adds: “At universities now we have a full-time staff member handling guest relations to monitor social media traffic. This isn’t an extra staff member, but we believe this role is important enough now that we have to change the focus of the onsite team.”
How do you follow the Olympics 2012?
Flushed with the success of not only winning catering contracts for the London Olympics 2012, but also delivering a successful service, Sodexo is eyeing the 2014 Commonwealth Games and golf’s Ryder Cup, both in Scotland.
Not only that, but there is the football World Cup in Brazil in 2014 – which is bigger even than the Olympics – and then the 2016 Olympics in Rio where catering contracts worth between £600m-700m will be available.
Sodexo is positioning itself to bid for all these, building on its existing strong presence in Scotland and hoping to leverage advantage out of its latest purchase, the acquisition of Brazil-based Puras – the biggest catering company in South America – for €525m.
Wave & pay
Sodexo worked closely with Visa to trial swipe payment technology during the London Olympics.
Customers use their Visa card like an Oyster card on the London Underground to instantly debit their account for small purchases.
Chris John says: “We worked closely with Visa on the use of its ‘wave and pay’ technology at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“The system worked very well for us and there is no doubt that we will be looking at using it again in the future.”
Sodexo’s Olympic involvement
Sodexo operated spectator and Olympic facility catering at various venues:
* Olympic Park South (including the Olympic Stadium itself, the Aquatics Centre and the Water Polo Arena, Prestige Pavilion)
* Glasgow football stadium Hampden Park
* St James’s Park, Newcastle (football)
* Royal Artillery Barracks, London (shooting)
* Lord’s Cricket Ground (archery)
Over the six weeks of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games its teams served 4.5m spectators, 15,000 Olympic Park South workers on site and 80,000 hospitality covers.
The catering ranged from fish and chips concessions to a la carte and canapé receptions for 10,000 VIPs at the opening and closing ceremonies.
Its dedicated Olympic team comprised 200 regular employees plus 3,500 new members of staff recruited to help cover the event.