Sodexho UK & Ireland (2000-2003)

View the Sodexo UK and Ireland timeline here ](/c/business/companies/33938/sodexo-uk--ireland)View the Sodexho UK and Ireland timeline from 2004-2008 here
[View the Gardner Merchant timeline here

](/c/business/companies/30923/gardner-merchant)

MORE LINKS ON THE CATERERAnton's new horizon
Just the job - Simon Dobson, Managing director, Sodexho Prestige
Sodexho's people
The 10 toughest tenders
Mark of authority
The numbers Games (Commonwealth Games 2002)
New image, better staff

Reader Diary - Sara Carless, district manager, Devon & Cornwall ConstabularyReader diary - March 2003
New Year and it's back to the grind
A load of work - but a load of fun, too
Thrill of anticipation as annual awards ceremony approaches
Free after 14 years - with a little time off for good behaviour
Keeping all the plates spinning at once
Busy, busy, busy - but it was all worth it
Royalty comes to call
Looks like another busy year ahead

Overworking our staff isn't working (David Ford) Root one catering (Organica)
Simon Dobson - MD, Sodexho Prestige
Playing to win (2002 Commonwealth Games)
Robin Austin - Production and development manager Sodexho Prestige, Scotland, Edinburgh
Contracting to expand
Postcards from down under (Sydney Olympics)Size isn't everything (Zurich Financial Services, Swindon)
Scotch twist - Scottish Parliament
French dressing (name change)
Accounting for taste - Chartered Accountants' Hall in the City of London
Down under pressure (Sydney Olympics)
Feeding frenzy (Sydney Olympics)
Feeding The Flame (Sydney Olympics, 2000)
What's in a name?

TIMELINE
2003

• December 2003 Sodexho's third Masterclass dinner sees British and Chinese chefs provide a Scottish culinary experience for 190 HSBC employees and guests in Hong Kong. The cultural exchange shifts to HSBC Towers in London's Canary Wharf in January 2004.
• December 2003 Willie Pike quits his role as executive chef at Sodexho after nine years to become director of food for Ayshire-based hotel group Costley & Costley.
  as director of food.
• November 2003 Sodexho Prestige caters for 64,000 people at the Rugby World Cup final in Australia, 15,000 more than in 1999.
• November 2003 Sodexho Alliance reports an 11.3% fall in net profit to £113m for the year to 31 August, but forecasts 5% growth in the current financial year. Key contract wins include GlaxoSmithKline in London, Wal-Mart in Germany and Motorola in China, plus the retention of the record £592m contract with the US Marine Corps.
• November 2003 Sodexho loses a major deal with Tube Lines, a London Underground infrastructure company. Directors Table loses two contracts: London-based chartered surveyors Drivers Jonas and Edinburgh-based IT firm Xansa.
• November 2003 Sodexho Healthcare opens new retail operations forecourts at the New Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the Royal Liverpool Hospital housing Strollers, Spitfires and Café Express units. The division has [three PFI hospitals ](/articles/51345)up and running, at Hereford County Hospital, Wythenshawe Hospital in south Manchester, and King's College Hospital in London.
• November 2003 Sodexho wins a new £1.8m-a-year multi-service contract at Shoreditch Community College, London, and begins a new contract with Thorpe Bay School in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
• October 2003 Sodexho removes vended sweets and fizzy drinks from the menu when it retains its 30-year association with leading public school Reed's School in Cobham, Surrey.
• October 2003 Sodexho Alliance blames a 7.3% drop in revenues to £8b (from £8.9b) in the year to 31 August on currency fluctuations and poor performance in the UK, where output dropped by 3.9% to £1.02b and profit forecasts were downgraded by 11% in September.
• October 2003 Sodexho loses its contract at the [Ladbrokes site ](/articles/50609)in West London to Yes Dining.
• October 2003 Sodexho's healthcare division is re-awarded its management contract with the Leicestershire Partnership and Consortium NHS Trust, worth £4m (services) and £294,000 (management contract) per year.
• October 2003 Sodexho Alliance shares fall on the news that the US Supreme Court is allowing a racial discrimination lawsuit against Sodexho, filed in 2001 by 10 Marriott Managment Services staff, to proceed.
• October 2003 Sodexho will handle the food at the fundraising BallArena event next February, created by hospitality network organisation Arena. More details here.
• October 2003 Anton Edelmann is to open a [food academy ](/articles/50430)for junior chefs at his new Allium restaurant, which opens on the 16 October on the site of Rhodes in The Square at London's Dolphin Square hotel. Head chef is Peter Woods from Holland Park's Belvedere restaurant.
• October 2003 Sodexho Prestige wins a £35m-£40m contract for the 2003 Rugby World Cup which kicks off this month at Stadium Australia in Sydney. the deal involves entertainment, tickets, catering and transport at the 48 matches across 11 stadia.
• September 2003 Sodexho loses the £1.7m-a-year catering contract for Edinburgh Castle to Elior's Digby trout Restaurants.
• September 2003 Anton Edelmann leaves London's Savoy hotel after 21 years as its maitre chef des cuisines and become principal chef for Directors Table, Sodexho's fine-dining division. Edelmann will also oversee the food operation at its fine-dining restaurant at London's Dolphin Square hotel, which closed in May.
• September 2003 Sodexho Alliance issues its third profit warning this year and warns it will take three years to restore the UK to profitability. It downgrades net income forecasts to £112m (from earlier predictions of £139.9m and £146.8m) for the year to August 2003.
• August 2003 HR director Martin Archer outlines the company's £5.5m investment in training and development and £500,000 recruitment campaign to drive the UK recovery. Executive director of food services Peter Hazzard is retiring after 30 years and 130 HQ jobs have been shed. Multi-service contracts now account for 20% of existing and 50% of new business.
• August 2003 Sodexho adds four support services to the contract it has held with missile systems company MBDA in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, since 1989. Sodexho USA wins a four-year, £62.1m food service contract across all 99 public schools in Atlanta, Georgia.
• July 2003 Sodexho Defence Services scoops a £290m, 30-year deal with the Ministry of Defence to provide catering, mess management and cleaning services to its £4b, 30-year Allenby-Connaught PFI project. Sodexho will be the supply partner to Aspire Defence, the preferred bidder for the MoD project to overhaul facilities at Aldershot and Salisbury Plain.
• July 2003 Sodexho Prestige caters at the three-day Open Golf Championship in Sandwich, Kent. A union report finds four firms (including Sodexho) control 51% of contracted-out NHS services.
• July 2003 UK & Ireland sales are down by 3.3% to £758m for the nine months to 31 May thanks to the economic slowdown in B&I and the termination of unprofitable hotel contracts. Strong growth in defence includes new and retained military contracts Aldershot garrison (worth £18m a year), the Falkland Islands and RAF High Wycombe.
• July 2003 Sodexho develops a [hot food vending offer ](/articles/49217)with its Tillery Valley Foods subsidiary to address shrinking lunch breaks at work. It signs up to introduce Weight Watchers mealsat 45 UK workplaces including Kraft Foods, B&Q, JP Morgan and Panasonic.
• July 2003 Contract loses include insurer [Scottish Life ](/articles/49076)in Edinburgh and News International Newspapers in Glasgow.
• July 2003 Sodexho Scotland retains, adds to or extends four new contracts, at the [Scottish Fire Training College ](/articles/50236)at Gullane, East Lothian; George Watson's College in Edinburgh; Gleneagles hotel; and Coca Cola in East Kilbride.
• July 2003 Sodexho's Home Service community meals division retains the contract it has held with the London Borough of Redbridge since 1999.
• June 2003 Directors Table loses its £2.5m contract at investment bank Société Générale, at City of London investment bank Merrill Lynch (£5m-a-year) and at insurance group Jardine Lloyd Thompson. It withdraws from its £5m contract with GCHQ, the government intelligence and security organisation, over investment level demands.
• June 2003 Sodexho Alliance appoints Jean-Michel Dhenain and Michel Landel joint presidents and chief operating officers to replace Albert George, who resigns following a stroke earlier this year. Landel also oversees the UK, Ireland and remote management.
• June 2003 Sodexho wins contracts at Total Lindsey Oil Refinery in Immingham, Lincolnshire and at Unilever Bestfoods in Crawley, West Sussex. It starts a catering and hospitality contract at telecommunications equipment company Marconi's two Coventry sites.
• May 2003 Sodexho loses its £1m-a-year contract with the Scottish Police College in Kincardine,, Clackmannanshire along with its 28-year association with the Construction Industry Training Board in King's Lynn, Norfolk.
• May 2003 Sodexho Scotland wins the £1m-a-year catering contract for the Scottish Parliament's new HQ which opens in Edinburgh next year. It caters at the Parliament's temporary seat at the Assembly Hall on the Mound.
• April 2003 UK sales fell by 4.4% to £521.2m in the six months to 28 February, while group sales declined by 6.1% to £4.3b.
• April 2003 The former City Rhodes restaurant is renamed Whites by new leaseholder Marco Pierre White, who buys the lease on the premises in Sodexho's London HQ.
• April 2003 Sodexho Prestige wins a hospitality and catering contract with [Bristol City Council ](/articles/48030)to provide at visitor attraction Ashton Court Mansion.
• April 2003 Sodexho Prestige strikes a deal to use the Wheeler's of St James's restaurant brand at all of its hospitality events - such as Royal Ascot in June. Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White and Robert Earl bought the 150-year-old seafood restaurant from Compass last year.
• March 2003 Sodexho Alliance demands a stock market investigation into false rumours it had lost its £622m-worth of contracts with the US Marine Corps, which knocked down its share price by 15%. Sixty members of the US House of representatives urge Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to cancel the contract
  because of France's opposition to the Gulf War, which Sodexho says has cost it supply contracts in the region (but not contracts in the USA).
• March 2003 Sodexho and Richmond-upon-Thames College develop a programme [teaming up students and Sodexho chefs ](/articles/47844)for six months. Sodexho sponsors the Academy of Food and Wine Service's new Saturday Club initiative to attract youngsters into food service.
• March 2003 Sodexho extends its £2m-a-year lunch contract for West Sussex council's 235 primary schools.
• March 2003 Sodexho retains the £3m-a-year hotel services contract for North Devon District Hospital under Best Value, which replaced compulsory competitive tendering in 1998. It won the first external Best Value deal in 2001, at Hull and East Yorkshire NHS Trust's Castlehill Hospital.
• March 2003 Sodexho loses two contracts to BaxterSmith - Novartis in Horsham and Medical Research Council in London's Regent Park - and the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes to Blue Apple. Directors Table loses London-based creative consultancy Imagination after 14 years to Vacherin.
• February 2003 Sodexho Alliance [downgrades its 2003 forecast ](/articles/47105)for organic sales growth. Sodexho UK extends its range of services at HJ Heinz in Wigan, Greater Manchester; provides extra support at Army training camps in Europe for the Ministry of Defence (which provides £100m-worth of business); and wins an extension to its £1.3m-a-year contract with Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Trust in the West Midlands.
• February 2003 Director's Table loses its second managing director within a year as Rebecca Thomas moves to London-based caterer Eaton (whose chief executive Rodney Widdowson headed Directors Table three years ago). Thomas' predecessor, Mark Philpot, left last year to found Vacherin.
• January 2003 Sodexho targets the home meal replacement market by agreeing to sell meal kits supplied by Rocket in staff restaurants. More details here.
• January 2003 Gary Rhodes and Sodexho will terminate their six-year partnership with the closure of their two Michelin-starred restaurants. City Rhodes at Sodexho's Holborn HQ shuts in March and Rhodes on the Square in Pimlico in May. The Rhodes & Co brasseries in Manchester and Edinburgh closed last year.
• January 2003 Sodexho UK has terminated contracts worth about £13m in annual turnover (all in the B&I sector) to improve profitability and is monitoring the five worst performers in each sector weekly. The recovery plan includes training and motivating staff, tightening on-site managers ‘approach to profitability, and reducing overheads.
• January 2003 Sodexho wins deals at two Tibbett & Britten sites - in Grays, Essex, and St Albans, Hertfordshire - and renews its deal with the City of London Police.

2002

• December 2002 Sodexho wins two three-year catering, hospitality and vending contracts with newsagent WH Smith and distributes free copies of its [Student Survival Guide](/articles/46069) to school leavers across the UK.
• December 2002 Sodexho USA wins a [£3.5m catering contract at Grace College ](/articles/46352)in Lake Winona, Indiana.
• December 2002 Bob Cotton, chief executive of the British Hospitality Association and former director of communications and strategic development for Sodexho until his departure in late 1998, wins a Catey Special Award.
• December 2002 Sodexho loses its contract with air conditioning manufacturing firm AAF in Cramlington, Northumberland. It also loses the hotel services contract for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust to ISS Mediclean who wins a new £8m- a-year deal.
• November 2002 Sodexho extends its contract at two National Assembly of Wales sites in Carmarthen and Caernarfon and adds a site at Llandrindod Wells.
• November 2002 Sodexho UK forecasts a £19m shortfall in profits for the year to 31 August due to the problems with Sodexho Land Technology, 20 poorly-performing contracts, the ‘hazardous' launch of the hotel management business, write-offs and restructuring costs. UK sales are expected to drop to £1.05b (from £1.09b) and operating profits to slump from 5.9% to zero. The UK division employs 55,000 staff across 3,500 contracts.
• November 2002 Sodexho Defence Services introduces the first trials of a new [pay-as-you-dine system for soldiers at the Hyde Park barracks](/articles/45603) in London. Eurest and Aramark are also trialling the scheme intended to replace the current set-cost regime. Sodexho also teams up with the Army to open the [Clouds Hill ](/articles/45996)local pub and restaurantin Bovington, Dorset.
• October 2002 Sodexho hotel services staff at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen hospitals are to be balloted on strike action after rejecting a pay offer.
• October 2002 Sodexho's Ministry of Defence division is the first big name to work with David Oliver's Prison Service chef training scheme, Custody to Work. Sodexho launches a series of breakfast seminars for senior directors to drive facilities management higher up the boardroom agenda.
• September 2002 Sodexho Alliance issues its second profits warning this year following a "rapid deterioration of profitability in the UK" and "accounting anomalies", especially with grounds maintenance subsidiary Sodexho Land Technology.
• September 2002 Sodexho wins a catering, hospitality and vending contract with [medical equipment manufacturer Smith & Nephew ](/articles/44793)in Hull and publishes its seventh biennial[ School Meals Survey](/articles/45031).
• September 2002 Sodexho USA wins a [£32.3m contract with Metropolitan Life Insurance ](/articles/44793)across the USA and a £3m-a-year catering contract with DePauw University in Indiana.
• August 2002 Sodexho wins a £1.5m-a-year catering contract at the [National College for School Leadership ](/articles/44304)in Nottingham.
• August 2002 Sodexho launches a new [work-based graduate training scheme ](/articles/44271)as its contract list grows to more than 3,800, up from 3,500 at the end of 2001.
• August 2002 About [300 Sodexho workers win an industrial dispute ](/articles/44076)over terms and conditions at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and call off their third week of strike action. The caterer announces 70 redundanciesas part of its on-going review.
• July 2002 UK contract wins include [Aberdeen Football Club ](/articles/43427)(£1m a year), medical equipment supplier Bespak and Epsom-based consultancy and support services group Atkins. Sodexho adds e-ordering services at car-lease provider Arval PHH in Swindon and DIY retailer B&Q's head office in Southampton to relieve overcrowded staff restaurants.
• July 2002 US wins for Sodexho include the [Marine Corps Miramar air station ](/articles/43820)in San Diago, California (worth £7.4m a year); Bryant College in Rhode Island (£3.2m a year); and University of La Verne in California, USA (£1m a year). Its £566.7m contracts across all US Marine Corps mess halls are reaffirmed.
• July 2002 Staff at the Dolphin Square complex of hotel suites and private flats in London's Pimlico (but not Rhodes on the Square) stage a one-day strike for higher pay. The Dolphin Trust [submits an improved pay offer ](/articles/44470)in August.
• July 2002 Sodexho [loses two catering contracts ](/articles/43497)to 7 Day Catering , at Veriplast in Durham and the Baker Group in Crick, Northamptonshire.
• June 2002 Sodexho scoops two accolades in the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards 2002 - Banqueting Chef (Malcolm Emery) and Competition Chef (Peter Joyner).
• May 2002 Sodexho Alliance sells Lockhart, its £59m-turnover Reading-based catering equipment business, to London-based supplier Bunzl. Sodexho's Promise range wins it the British Sandwich Caterer of the Year award from the British Sandwich Association.
• May 2002 Management problems more than [halved UK operating margins ](/articles/42714)to 2.2% (from 4.6% the year before) in the six months to 28 February.
• May 2002 Sodexho wins [30-year contracts at two new PFI NHS hospitals ](/articles/42420)- Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury (£5.1m a year) and Queen Mary's in Roehampton, south-west London (£2.2m a year). It loses Henley Collegein Coventry to Redcliffe Catering.
• April 2002 David Ford quits as chief executive after five years and is replaced by Mark Shipman, boss of Sodexho's Wood Dining Services in the USA (whose Mark Adams replaced Charles McCole as UK finance director in January). Ford becomes chief executive of serviced office firm Regus in August. Emily Holbrook, Sodexho's chef de partie at Hasbro in Basingstoke, is British Meat Chef of the Year 2002.
• April 2002 Sodexho Alliance boosts interim turnover by 10% to £4b. UK and Ireland sales are up by 2.6%. The group now has more than 314,000 people across 24,300 sites in 72 countries.
• April 2002 Sodexho secures a catering contract at a BMW site in Swindon, Wiltshire.
• March 2002 Sodexho scoops a £10m-a-year contract to provide catering and facilities management services for a PFI hospital in Romford, Essex.
• March 2002 Sodexho Alliance secures a £12.4m contract at Canadian nickel company Inco Inc's new mine in Goro, New Caledonia.
• February 2002 Sodexho starts a multi-service contract at the RSPCA's new HQ near Horsham in West Sussex.
• February 2002 Sodexho [closes the Rhodes & Co restaurant that opened at Jenners department store in Edinburgh ](/articles/40645)in September 1999. The Manchester Rhodes & Co also closes by the end of the year.
• January 2002 The Sodexho-run restaurant at Manchester's Museum of Science & Industry has increased takings by 77% since entry charges were scrapped in December.

2001

• December 2001 Sodexho Prestige wins the third and final contract for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, to cater at the Athletes Village, boosting the combined annual turnover to £8.5m. It serves half a million meals during the 10-day event in July and August 2002.
• December 2001 Sodexo opens its third [Rhodes & Co brasserie at the new Arora hotel ](/articles/40088)near Gatwick airport in West Sussex.
• December 2001 Sodexho Defence Services is awarded a five-year, £20m-plus multi-service contract for the RAF site in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
• November 2001 Sodexho Alliance warns the current global economic slowdown will result in turnover losses of £106m in the USA, £9.3m in the UK and £7.5m in France. In the year to 31 August, group profit increased by 63% to £86m) and turnover by 14% to £7.4b.
• November 2001 Sodexho publishes a report into changing work attitudes over the past 40 years. Steve Kendall, hospitality head chef at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in London, wins this year's Sodexho Chef of the Year competition.
• November 2001 Sodexho Alliance snaps up Minesite Catering, one of Australia's biggest catering groups.
• August 2001 Wyn Roberts, deputy managing director of fine-dining caterer Citation, [joins Aramark ](/articles/37663)along with Denis Stoner, former regional manager for London.
• July 2001 Sodexho Prestige wins the £3m corporate hospitality contract for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, along with the Sportcity tender for the games. The division has annual turnover of £90m across 116 profit centres with Ascot, at £18m, its biggest contract to date.
  commonwealth.
• August 2001 Sodexho Defence Services regains the contract to look after the Armed Forces in the Falkland Islands which it had run from 1983 to 1996. The new five-year, £2m-a-year deal covers a range of services.
• July 2001 Sodexho executive chef Willie Pike scoops the [Competition Chef ](/articles/37356)category in the Craft Guild of Chefs awards.
• July 2001 Sodexho Defence Services wins a £1.4m-per-annum deal to provide support services to 20-plus army sites in the North-west of England. Sodexho scoops two catering contracts in Manchester - at Van den Bergh Foods' Brooke Bond Tea manufacturing site and Northern Foods' Trafford Park bakery - but loses its share of the of the catering contract at catering-to-insurance giant CGNU to Aramark.
• June 2001 Sodexho wins a £1.5m a year catering contract at Thistle's Manchester City hotel, where it will open a new restaurant, the Portland Street Restaurant & Bar with A Touch of Rhodes.
• June 2001 Sodexho starts a [£7m-a-year catering, cleaning and grounds maintenance contract in Wiltshire ](/articles/36338)covering schools, offices, other council premises and meals-on-wheels. It will launch its Energy Download Zone and Club Joules brands into the county's schools.
• May 2001 Sodexho Prestige teams up with chef Steven Saunders to launch the new Organica organic catering service for events and private functions at the Chelsea Flower Show. It becomes the first outside catering company to win Soil Association accreditation.
• May 2001 Sodexho Alliance [grew sales by 13% to £3.7b ](/articles/36259)and operating profits by 13% to £195m in the half year to 28 February. New clients wins include Leeds NHS Trust.
• May 2001 Sodexho scoops a three-year, £5m-per-annum railway catering deal with [First Great Western ](/articles/36170)that will be run by new division Sodexho Travel.
• May 2001 Barclays Bank issues a £1m compensation claim against Sodexho and Sutcliffe Catering UK after a faulty deep-fat fryer set fire to its computer centre in Wythenshaw in 1998.
• May 2001 Sodexho Alliance [buys out the remaining 52% stake in its US joint venture Sodexho Marriott Services ](/articles/36094)for just over £696m, an improved bid on the £626m it offered in January.
• April 2001 Sodexho's hotel and commercial restaurant division wins a three-year, £1.5m-a-year to provide hotel and food services to a third Prince Hotels property, in Walsall. Its business also encompasses 44 Friendly Hotels, four Rhodes restaurants and Bentalls department stores.
• April 2001 Sodexho Alliance [sales grew by 14% to €6b ](/articles/35849)during the six months to 28 February. UK and Ireland turnover rises by 11.8%.
• pril 2001 Sodexho Alliance spends £327m buying Sogeres in France and Wood Dining Services in the USA from Albert Abela Coporation and PAI Management, (its 40% of Sogeres). Sogeres, which turned over £176m in 2000, caters for the Roland Garros tennis championship, French TV channel TF1 and the Hôpital Américain in Paris. Wood Dining Services turned over £282m in 2000 and counts the National Security Agency, elderly care group ManorCare and Pennsylvania;s Lehigh University as clients.
• April 2001 Sodexho Marriott Services wins two eight-year contracts worth £590m-plus to provide food and related services at [all 55 Marine Corps garrison mess halls in the USA. ](/articles/35527)
• March 2001 Sodexho's hotels and commercial restaurants division scoops a £3.5m-a-year deal to run retailer Bentalls' ten customer and staff restaurants across six locations for five years. Sodexho Scotland boosts its annual turnover to £60m with an £8m catering contract for the Scottish Executive's civil servants.
• February 2001 Sodexho is to offer [smart cards to six new state school catering contracts ](/articles/34633)in Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester. It has hired as a consultant Simon Hulstone of Cheltenham's three-rosette Bacchanalian restaurant - the first British chef to win a gold medal in the Skill Olympics (in 1995).
• January 2001 Sodexho Alliance launches a $900m (£617m) bid to [buy the remaining 52% of US-based Sodexho Marriott Services ](/articles/34192)it did not acquire in 1998. It has sales of $4.7b (£3.2b) a year.

2000

• December 2000 Sodexho Alliance reports a [27% rise in profits to £94m ](/articles/33502)on sales up 16% to £6.4b for the year to 31 August. But it had to make a £43.7m provision against its stake in Corrections Corporation of America and downgrade future growth forecasts. Sales grew by 6% in the UK and Ireland, double that of last year.
• November 2000 Sodexho publishes its sixth biennial School Meals Survey and reveals it is introducing smart cards at many schools.
• October 2000 Sodexho joins the web revolution with the [launch of its Corporate Hospitality Online ](/articles/36479)service. It adds Conferences Online in February 2001.
• October 2000[New catering contracts ](/articles/32831)include seven civil servant staff restaurants across Northern Ireland and with financial services group National Australia in London.
• October 2000 Sodexho welcomes the replacement of compulsory competitive tendering for hospital catering with a system stressing quality as well as cost. It has [piloted"best value" contracts ](/articles/32009)at Humberside hospitals since April.
• September 2000 Contract caterers at the Sydney Olympics consider suing the organisers for lost earnings as spectators are bringing in their own food.
• September 2000 Sodexho wins the catering contract at Eli Lilly distillers in Liverpool and publishes its sixth School Meals Survey. Directors Table loses Nomura bank in the City to Aramark.
• August 2000 Sodexho's first complete hotel management contract is to run two three-star hotels in Coventry and Birmingham for Midlands-based Prince Hotels for five years.
• August 2000 Sodexho's brand awareness recovers to 47% after plunging to 15% with the name change in February. The rebrand reflects its global position and move from pure contract caterer to support service provider (20% of UK contracts are non-food). The Sodexho Prestige name replaces all niche catering brands such as Ring & Brymer, but city-focused Directors Table remains.
• August 2000 New catering contracts wins include book distributor Gardners Books in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and Kodak's base in Harrow, Middlesex. [Healthcare contracts are worth £150m a year.](/articles/28618)
• July 2000 Sodexho wins three catering contracts at Superdrug.
• June 2000 Sodexho and chef Gary Rhodes team up to launch a Touch of Rhodes menu at the St James's Club in London. and consultant chef new five-star restaurant Seven Eight.
• June 2000 Offshore division Universal Sodexho of Aberdeen wins a National Safety Award.
• May 2000 Interim net profits to 29 February at Sodexho Alliance grow by 43% to £45.4m on sales up 22% to £3.2b. New wins at Sodexho UK (which turns over £968m a year across 3,751 contracts) include a catering deal across 15 Shell oil platforms.
• May 2000 Sodexho Defence Services starts a £16m, five-year contract to provide support services for the [army in Edinburgh](/articles/23718), Scotland (it scooped the £2.75m-a-year deal for Glasgow last August). Sodexho also secures a staff feeding contract at seven Automobile Association, bringing its total AA business to £2.5m per annum.
• May 2000 Sodexho UK regains its catering contract at [Bank of England Printing Works ](/articles/23777)in Loughton, Essex, while Sodexho Prestige (formerly Gardner Merchant Leisure) retains its contract at Edinburgh's Murrayfield stadium (worth £2.5m a year). The group loses the new £1.5m-a-year catering contract at Southend NHS Trustto Compass.
• April 2000 Sodexho Alliance employs [270,000 staff in 70 countries ](/articles/23364)and holds 1,200 multinational contracts with 250 clients.
• April 2000 New contract wins include [Royal Doulton ](/articles/20707)and eight secondary schools in Bradford (worth £1.2m a year). A new training initiative helps Sodexho Healthcare secure a further seven-year contract with Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
• March 2000 Sodexho declares a success its six-month trial of its [frozen home meal replacement ](/articles/18082)service (called Now For Later) at four blue-chip clients.
• March 2000 Sodexho UK opens its sixth fitness centre, at the National Australia Group bank in Glasgow. Sodexho Prestige is re-awarded the catering contract for Mills Mount restaurant at Edinburgh Castle.
• March 2000 Sodexho UK wins a £3m-a-year catering contract at [12 Littlewoods sites ](/articles/18042)while Sodexho Scotland wins a £4m-a-year catering/cleaning contract with Lothian and Borders Police. Five new wins in Manchester in the past year worth nearly £1m in total include Vertex, Air Miles in Warrington, Manchester BioTech and Mirror Colour Print in Oldham.
• March 2000 Former chairman Garry Hawkes [resigns from the Sodexho board in protest ](/articles/16878)at the company's name change. In July, he announces a new role as non-executive chairman at Aramark.
• 21 February 2000 Gardner Merchant formally [adopts the Sodexho namefrom its French parent to facilitate the UK business's diversification beyond food service (currently 85% of its business) into areas such as PFI contracts and full hotel management deals. Brand awareness plungesfrom 98% to 15% but the group sets aside £4m for a three-year brand rebuilding campaign.