Down under pressure
During the 48 hours prior to the opening of Stadium Australia in March 1999, catering general manager Richard Errington, from Sodexho Food and Management Services, made regular visits to the coldroom. He was not after supplies; he just needed to stay awake. "It was the hardest 48 hours of my life," he recalls. "We just worked straight through."
A 105,000-strong crowd was due to gather for a rugby league match. There was no dress rehearsal, and 1,640 new staff had to get it right. For Sodexho, which had won the contract in August 1996, it was the first event of a 30-year contract, with just two seasons of fine-tuning before the event for which the stadium had been built, the Olympic Games.
Like most Olympic Games, the Sydney Olympics has attracted its fair share of criticism. Talk of backhanders, insufficient sponsorship and ticketing incompetence by the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Socog) has marred the start of the process. But there's now only seven months to go before the games are due to open, on 15 September. Already, there's a palpable buzz at the 115,600-capacity Stadium Australia, where the track and field events and the opening and closing ceremonies will take place.
New departure
For Sodexho, one of five companies to tender for the contract, the win was important because it marked a new departure into the leisure market. Whereas UK counterpart Gardner Merchant (now also part of Sodexho Alliance) has experience of large events such as the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, horse-racing at Ascot and the Wimbledon championships, the only large-scale leisure event Sodexho operates in Australia is the Victorian Spring Carnival. At this series of horse races, held at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse, 1,500 staff feed 280,000 people over four days.
At Homebush, the Sydney suburb that is home to the purpose-built Olympic complex, it's a different story. The stadium will host two million spectators during the games, Sodexho will provide 3,000 staff, and catering revenues are forecast to exceed Aus$20m (£8.1m).
Consequently, when putting together the tender document, Sodexho called on its British colleagues, enlisting the help of Stephen McManus and Russell Haddon, respectively managing director and regional director of Gardner Merchant Leisure Services. Both spent time in Sydney lending their expertise from the British event season to help convince Socog that Sodexho had the relevant experience to do the job.
"I don't think we would have won the contract if wasn't for the fact that we could demonstrate we had the necessary back-up to pull it off," says Jonathan Knight, Sodexho's chief executive officer. At the time, the company was in the process of changing its name from Gardner Merchant Australia to that of parent company Sodexho. Winning the tender launched Sodexho on to the Australian leisure map.
Design process
From the caterer's perspective, one of the most appealing things about the stadium was the hand that Sodexho was able to have in the design process.
Stadium Australia was built under a BOOT system (build, own, operate, transfer), so after 30 years the government of New South Wales will assume ownership.
This form of private finance initiative required an outlay by Sodexho of Aus$30m (£12.4m), consisting of Aus$10m (£4.1m) in equity and Aus$20m (£8.3m) in fixtures, fittings and equipment. This gives Sodexho a 13.6% shareholding in a listed company, also called Stadium Australia, which has been set up to run the stadium business until 2030, when it changes hands. As part of the deal, Sodexho pays a 10% food and beverage turnover-related rent to Stadium Australia.
The advantage of the huge financial outlay lies in the fact that Sodexho was there at every step, designing kitchens that would help the company achieve the best financial return and specifying state-of-the-art equipment. The result is 192 catering areas, a product which Errington describes as a "Swiss cheese with lots of different holes". These include a central production unit (CPU) of 1,200sq m and 16 satellite kitchens.
Some 15,000 meals can be produced each day from the CPU, which has been designed so that there is no crossover of any food at any stage. In specifying this, Errington is planning for the future, having seen at first hand the stringent food safety rules that his British colleagues have to contend with. "Australia is not as strict as the UK when it comes to food safety and hygiene, but I can see similar legislation coming," he says. "So it's important to plan for these things now."
Errington also had complete control of the branding of Stadium Australia's 83 kiosks, where members of the public will be able to buy snacks. He opted for across-the-board use of the word "big", with hearty portions of food such as bigfish, bigburger, bigpizza and bigdog. Errington says that he wanted 80% of what was available to be familiar and 20% that would be different. The different offerings are on the bignoodles counter, where visitors can buy Japanese bento boxes and laksa, a Chinese soup.
During the Olympic period, the bigburger concept will be replaced, since McDonald's, an Olympics worldwide sponsor, has a monopoly on serving burgers. All other brands will operate as normal.
The games may have launched the stadium and Sodexho on the leisure map - "Our performance will predicate how successful our future in leisure will be," confirms Errington - but arguably the biggest challenge is how to sustain business after the Olympics. To give the stadium longevity, the track will be taken out after the games to create an oval playing surface suitable for cricket and Australian Rules football. Seating capacity will be reduced from 110,000 to 80,000 by the removal of temporary end stands in the north and south of the stadium.
A prime source of revenue during these events will be corporate catering, which is estimated to reach Aus$15m (£6.2m), 46.8% of the total stadium revenue of Aus$32m (£13.27m). This is made up of corporate boxes and suites, event-day functions and functions on non-event days, which make up 320 days of the year. The business will be a mixture of conferences, weddings, product launches and corporate sports days - in fact, almost anything. As Errington proudly declares: "You name it, we'll do it."
FACTS
Stadium Australia
Caterer: Sodexho Food and Management Services
Normal workforce: 1,500
Workforce during Olympic Games: 3,000
Seating capacity (during Olympics): 90,000 public; 25,000 for Olympic "family" (guests of International Olympic Committee)
Catering revenues during Olympics: Aus$20m (£8.1m)
Corporate entertaining: 119 suites leased for three years for Aus$150,000 (£62,240) a year, each seating 20 people
Non-event days: 320 per year
Kitchen set-up: Central production unit, 1,200sq m; 16 satellite kitchens; 64 pantries attached to private suites; eight deli kitchens; 19 lounge bars; 83 concessions or kiosks; six vending or hawking depots; 10 beverage cellars; four staff amenity rooms; central warehouse receiving area, 1,100sq m
Source: Caterer & Hotel magazine, 24 February - 1 March 2000
