Contract catering round-up
Compass wins oil firm contract
Compass Group has won a £12m total turnover contract with Technip UK, a provider of engineering, technology and project management to the gas and oil industry. Under the terms of the three-year deal, ESS will provide catering, hotelkeeping and facilities management for Technip vessels in the North Sea, west Africa, Brazil and other regions.
The deal follows a five-year contract signed by Compass in 2004 to provide catering and housekeeping aboard Technip's ships. Compass has also picked up a two-year contract extension worth £9m at Oxford Brookes University. Compass's Chartwells education brand will continue to provide catering and hospitality services to 22,000 students and staff across five campuses.
Elior's Loftus ideal for expansion
Elior has won a five-year £7.5m total turnover contract to feed fans at Queens Park Rangers (QPR) football club. The caterer's Azure division will run 20 kiosks and four restaurants at QPR's Loftus Road Stadium in west London, as well as providing hospitality services and sales and marketing for the ground's conferencing facilities on non-match days. Elior chef Rory Thompson will oversee the catering at the Championship club, which gets an average gate for matches of 14,000, with Louise Herridge heading sales.
Host groups turns profitable
Jerry Brand's Host Contract Management has made its first annual profit since being set up more than four years ago. Brand, who was the major shareholder in Russell & Brand and later went on to set up and subsequently sell restaurant chain Orange Balloon with chef Brian Turner, launched Host in 2004.
The company's recently-filed accounts for the year to 31 December 2008 at Companies House show Host delivered its first annual profit of £54,739 (2007: loss of £141,187). Turnover for 2008 was £24.2m compared with £15.8m a year earlier and the company had 591 employees (2007: 466). Brand said he believed the business has now entered "adulthood" and was well placed to prosper during the recession.
Awards for school dinner cooks
Debbie Mumford has been named as the Local Authority Caterers Association's School Chef of the Year 2009.
Mumford, who works for Devon Catering & Cleaning Services and is based at Ermington Primary School in Ivybridge, Devon, beat eight other regional finalists to the title during a cook-off at Sheffield City College.
Her main course was fishballs with yogurt dressing in winning combination with a dessert of butternut squash cake.
Highly commended main course - apricot and minted lamb kebabs - went to Annette Wedd, who is employed by West Sussex County Council at Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee School in Horsham.
Best dessert was Alison Sinclair's Berrylicious, a strawberry and oatmeal shortcake served with a mini raspberry sundae. Sinclair works for Tayside Contracts at Inchture Primary School between Perth and Dundee.
