It Feeds A Village

Mike Buzalka

It sits not far from glorious antiquities such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike. It occupies land that three thousand years ago, when the Olympic Games first were conceived, may have held a farm or settlement supplying food and drink to those ancient athletes. The inhabitants of those early farms may well have witnessed the first Olympic thrills of victory and agonies of defeat.

Today, on that land not far from Athens, Greece, a 21st Century village rises. For several months this summer and early fall, this modern village— the Olympic Village—will house some 35,000 athletes, coaches and officials from more than 200 countries who have come to carry on the tradition of peaceful athletic competition first begun here so many centuries ago.

At the Olympics, some things remain the same—winners are still lauded, for instance, though not with laurel leaves but with gold medals and shoe contracts. Other things have changed markedly—no one in 800 BC could have conceived of synchronized swimming, water polo or basketball as Olympic events.

But something more fundamental is also both the same and different. Athletes still have to eat. But what they eat, where they eat and how food is prepared have changed perhaps even more than the Games themselves...

Joint Venture
The entity charged with feeding the residents of, and visitors to, the Olympic Village is Aramark-Dasko, a joint venture company that is an equal partnership between Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. and Daskalantonakis Group, a Greek hospitality firm that operates some 30 hotels and resorts in the country.

For Aramark, Olympic feeding is about as routine as such a massive event can be. Athens will mark the 13th Olympic Games—Winter and Summer—that the company has serviced since 1968. Included in that total is every Summer Games except the boycotted Moscow Games in 1980 (the company routinely partners with a local firm for Olympics held in foreign countries).

This time around, Aramark-Dasko will operate a series of foodservice outlets in the Olympic Village for the Olympics in August and then the Paralympics, which will follow them in September.

During the course of these events, the company is expected to serve more than two million meals to more than 35,000 athletes, coaches and officials (in addition, another 10 million meals are expected to be served to visitors and spectators at the various Olympic/Paralympic venues by local and international concessionnaires).

The Aramark-Dasko-operated facilities in the Olympic Village include Filoxenos (“hospitality”), the 6,500-seat main dining hall (plus its separate 700-seat employee dining area); a 42,520-sq.ft. production kitchen that supplies the main dining hall (which Aramark-Dasko was responsible for designing and building); Epikouros, an 600-seat casual dining “taverna” located in the middle of the residential area; a poolside cafe in the recreational section; four internet cafes; and a 300-seat retail cafe in the International Zone, where visitors to the Village congregate (they are generally not allowed into the residential areas).

In a separate contract, the company will also provide foodservice and catering to NBC, which will broadcast the Games, through a series of eight mobile kitchen operations (see sidebar on p. xx).

A Greek Summer
Aramark managers scheduled to work the Olympics began arriving in Greece in June (senior managers like Bruno have been onsite since last October), with most on hand by the beginning of July. The first meal—served to the Village staff—is on July 20th. The Village officially will open 10 days later, when athletes start arriving. The Opening Ceremonies are two weeks later, on August 13th and the Olympics run through the 26th.

At that point, the Village dining operation will have about a week of downtime, when it will only be feeding staff, before athletes begin arriving for the Paralympics, which open on September 17th.

In the past, this was a smaller event for the dining team, with a shorter duration and only about 60 percent as many athletes as the Olympics. But this year, Paralympics organizers decided to house judges and officials as well as athletes in the Olympic Village, meaning the usual 40-percent drop in business will only be about 10 to 20 percent. The full Olympic menu will be retained for the Paralympics but the staffing will be reduced by about a quarter. The main dining room seating will be slightly realigned to provide the officials and judges with an eating area separate from the athletes. A portion of the dining room will also be cleared to provide space for special equipment like wheelchairs.

Groundwork
Despite its near-exclusive “ownership” of Olympic Village feeding, Aramark still has to win an open bid process for each separate Olympiad. The responsibility for selecting a foodservice supplier in each Games rests with the host country's Olympic Committee, which forms shortly after a site is selected by the International Olympic Committee six or seven years before the actual event. That national committee then awards the foodservice contract a year or two in advance of the event (the Athens contract was officially awarded to Aramark-Dasko in February 2003).

The uncertainties and the time lag between bid and actual event mean that Olympic bids must have built-in flexibility. The stated public value of Aramark-Dasko's winning bid is $34 million, but the costplus nature of the contract provides for a series of adjustments—up or down— depending on factors that cannot be precisely anticipated two years out.

By the time the contract is awarded, a lot of groundwork has already taken place.

“We begin getting involved some three or four years out,” says Mark Bruno, vice president of Aramark's International Group and co-executive director of Aramark-Dasko in conjunction with a counterpart from Daskalantonakis Group. “We start to understand the Olympic Committee's plan and start giving them some insights based on what we've done in the past. If it's overseas, we also spend some time at this point identifying a local partner, and we start working on our operational plan to manage the big three things: people, products and distribution.

“We'll need to know the local market for both talent and product, as well as how we can get everything—not just food but also construction materials to get the kitchens built—to the site. That's all considered before we even compete for the contract.”

Aramark is undoubtedly already communicating regularly with Olympic Committee officials in Beijing, which has been selected as the site of the 2008 Summer Games, but which has not yet selected a foodservice contractor. Several cities are still vying for the honor of hosting the 2012 event, and they also get some attention. When FM first caught up with Bruno this past spring, he had just returned from a meeting with the New York City organizing committee, which is working to bring the 2012 Games to the Big Apple, “just to help them get some insights on what we do,” he said.

Supply Challenges
With only about a year and a half to prepare between the bid announcement and actual event, things must happen fast for an Olympic foodservice contractor. In addition, Athens will present a rather unique set of challenges. The two most recent Summer Olympics—Sydney, Australia, in 2000 and Atlanta in 1996—were held in large, modern, English-speaking countries with plenty of infrastructure.

By contrast, Greece is the smallest country ever to hold a modern-day Olympics (its population of 10 million is about the size of Michigan). It is also fairly isolated, traditional and speaks a language not many outside the country understand, though many Greeks do speak English (Bruno says his team has recruited just about everyone in the Aramark organization who knows Greek, while the Daskalantonakis Group alliance provides a source of cultural experience when dealing with local interests).

Other than language and a manpower shortage, Greece presents a supply challenge. Without a “one-stopshop”superdistributor available, it has had to build its own distribution operation (see p. xx). To stock its huge pantries, it will be relying on a mix of local Greek suppliers and companies from the European Union (of which Greece is a member). Fortunately, Aramark and/or Daskalantonakis Group already have relationships with many of these firms.They will be augmentedby a few specialty products sourced from overseas.

Almost nothing will be branded, at least not in the front-of-the-house. That's a departure from, say, the United States Olympic Training Centers, where the cafes depend on in-kind donations from “official suppliers” who then get to display their brands in the servery area.

The Athens Olympics has named only a few official suppliers—Coca-Cola for soft drinks and Heineken for beer, for example. Otherwise, no manufacturer brands will be displayed in the Olympic Village ( McDonald's—a longtime Olympic patron—will have the only branded outlet, in the main athletes dining room).

To manage supply and replenishment efficiently, Aramark-Dasko will use a standard computerized menu tracking system into which recipes of the entire menu will be inputted, along with sales projections.

“Based on a given day with a given menu,” Bruno explains, “we try to project how many people will eat one item versus another—how many people will have the lamb versus the pizza, for example. From our past experience, we have a good understandingof running these kinds of menus and what the athletes will eat. It helps us manage the number of portions that we prepare on each given day, and it helps manage procurement.”

What' s Available
The European flavor of the supply channel will pose some challenges for the culinary team. “The ingredients that we will use are very different from what we're used to,” remarks Executive Chef Mike Crane, who will be in charge of the culinary aspects of the Olympics operation in conjunction with a peer from Daskalantonakis Group.

“The packaging and the types of products are different,” Crane comments. “It'll also be a bit of a challenge working with lots of smaller suppliers as opposed to one big onestop-shop, like in the States. Here, we literally have one supplier for honey and one supplier just for five types of specialty cookies.”

But what you lose in operational efficiency, Crane is quick to add, you more than make up in authenticity and quality. “Some of these products are incredible!” he exclaims. “Through these small suppliers, the Greeks have maintained their traditional dishes and traditional ingredients. A lot of these dishes are handed down from generation to generation—in fact, a couple may even go back to the time of the ancient Olympics!”

Still, while authenticity is nice, Crane well knows that “with an event this large, we need to bring in pre-prepared items. It just doesn't make sense to do everything from scratch.”

Culture Shock
Not so easy, especially in a culture (Europe, not just Greece) where culinary traditions are deeply embedded and the acceptanceof speed-scratch ingredients and convenience foods lags far behind the U.S.

“Items like pre-made bagels, for example, are difficult to get a hold of, believe it or not,” Crane laments. Apparently, with its many traditional breakfast breads, Europe has not embraced the bagel as America has—and certainly not pre-made bagels. Even in late spring, Crane was still looking for a “bagel man”.

By that point, supply difficulties had already eliminated French toast as a breakfast alternative. “We couldn't locate a source for prepared French toast,” Crane says. “Yes, I know it's very simple to prepare, but making 7,000 portions from scratch...well you can imagine the amount of equipment it would take up!”

French toast and bagels aside, authenticity is the primary concern in determining suppliers. There are several, for example, just to provide the many different kinds of rice— from jasmine to basmati and from long-grain to sticky—that will be needed.

Bread is an even bigger problem from an authenticity standpoint, since it is almost impossible to duplicate traditional breads without all the authentic ingredients and the requisite breadmaking skills, he explains. Short of importing hundreds of bakers and probably thousands of specialty ingredients to satisfy every conceivable cultural taste (and sacrificing precious kitchen space for a baking operation), Aramark-Dasko will have to take some short cuts. “There are manufacturers who are willing to work with us to customize some of these items,” says Crane, “but they're going to use their own ingredients and what comes out will be somewhat different from what people are used to from their own countries. For example, a soft lavash that we wanted to have is actually closer to a large flat pita, a little bit different from the more typical tortilla-style lavash.”

Different Tastes
In the end, the Olympic menu has to balance a variety of supply, production and even chemical constraints. For instance, no poppy seeds can be used in anything because they can trigger false positives on drug tests with customer demands.

“We're in an event where we have to highlight a variety of cuisines so that athletes from all over the world each see something that makes them feel comfortable, something they can relate to,” Crane says.

Some ethnicities, such as Jews and Muslins will require special attention.

“We considered having a kosher kitchen,” Crane explains, “but since only a couple dozen people will require kosher meals each day, we decided it would make more sense simply to bring in items that are prepared under kosher guidelines. In addition, there will always be a variety of items among the daily food choices in the cafè that meet kosher standards.”

As for halal, the Muslim religious code governing how animals are slaughtered for their meats, “we're working with our manufacturer to have all of our chicken and lamb prepared under halal rules,” Crane says. That way, he explains, observant Muslims can eat any of the chicken-and lambbased dishes.

In the past, Aramark had tried to satisfy Muslim customers by preparing a separate menu of halal lamb dishes, “but the athletes indicated that they wanted to see more variety,” Crane explains. “Now, they'll be able choose from among three poultry dishes and two lamb dishes—as well as seafood options—at each meal period.”

Surprisingly, one diet that gets fairly minimal play is vegetarianism.

“We‘ve had very few request for vegetarian over the years,” Crane offers. Those wishing to go meatless have a choice of several plain pasta dishes, a couple of vegetarian pizzas and a variety of vegetables, rices and starches, he notes.

Meanwhile, meat—especially simple grilled items—will be eaten like it's going out of style. About 120 tons of beef, lamb, chicken and pork are expected to be consumed in the Olympic Village during the course of the Games

One particularly favorite category— surprisingly because it is not exactly what one would think of when considering the nutritional requirements of an elite athlete's diet—is sausages.

“They absolutely love sausages,” Crane reports. “It's a mainstay and part of their regular diet because for many it's a comfort food. It's something that reminds them of home because almost every culture has some sort of sausage as part of its cuisine.”

“We really pride ourselves on working with the individual athletes as needed,” Crane summarizes, “and we look forward to getting feedback because that's our opportunity to look at what we can do to improve the menu the next time around.”

Of course, that interaction is made a bit harder by language barriers, but it's not as hard as it might seem.

“In the end, the old pointing method works real well,” Crane laughs. “But seriously, we're very fortunate to have the people we have. We generally find someone on our staff who can speak a language.”

A Big, Fat, Partly-Greek Menu
The need for ethnic variety aside, the host country nevertheless has enormous pull on the makeup of an Olympic menu. Every Olympic Committee naturally wants to show off its own culture when it hosts an Olympics. And food is a huge part of every culture, so the pressure to serve authentic national dishes to guests is considerable.

Consequently, the Aramark-Dasko culinary team has had to work authentic Greek cuisine into their menu while still offering enough variety to satisfy the hundreds of ethnic preferences that will be represented in the Olympic Village.

Although there are specific traditional Greek entrees on the menu, Crane says much of its Greek nature comes from the traditional items incorporated into the choices: items like spoon sweets, cookies, cheese pies, a wide variety of fruits, nuts and cheeses that Greeks traditionally eat throughout the day, and the olive oil that they use at almost every meal.

The menu will also have to accommodate various nutritional needs as different athletes need different nutrients.

“You'll see what events they're in from what they eat,” offers Crane. “You'll see the weightlifters hitting the protein and just piling up the meat, while the runners and sprinters go more for the carbohydrates.”

Possible menu items are initially tested by Aramark corporate chefs back in Philadelphia, then retested in Athens using locally available ingredients.

Once a menu is approved by Aramark-Dasko , it must still be approved by the Olympic Committee, an arduous process.

In the end, Crane is confident it will be a menu everyone will be proud of, one that the Olympic Village residents will embrace.

“I'd describe its as an international menu with a heavy influence of Greek, using Greek ingredients and dishes,” he says.

On the Front Lines
To serve that “staggering” menu, each shift will use up to 250 staffers, with teams of chefs working the front-of-the-house at the 26 separate stations. The offerings will be a mix of flash and efficiency.

“We have an exhibition cooking station where a chef team will do some of the cooking,” Crane notes. “Obviously they won't be able to keep up with the volume, but its there to show the athletes that we're willing to prepare food in front of them if they want. To keep up with the volume, we'll have more teams in the back that will work to keep each station replenished.”

The management structure incorporates a dining director, four shift managers and lead chefs for each section, along with a facilities director with 10 assistants.

“We've tried to make each area comparable to a larger operation in the States, such as a college board operation” explains Aramark's Operations Manager Bridgett Stapleton. “The main dining director or shift manager handles the daily client relations and oversees the general flow and service of the operation while area managers concentrate on their specific areas.

The goal is to ensure that there is something appealing and appropriate for everyone at all times.

In the morning, for instance, an athlete walking into the main cafe will see a station dedicated to breakfast with a variety of traditional items, usually three daily egg dishes, as well as three additional eggless specialty items such as a casserole or crepes stuffed with apples.

The International station will offer four additional entrÈe choices and ttwo grilled items.

“That's already 12 separate entrèe choices just for breakfast,” Crane summarizes, “and that's not counting the separate Asian menu, where we have a noodle dish for every meal period.”

For breakfast, that includes a miso soup and a variety of chicken, fish and vegetable konji options.

If all that isn't enough, an athlete can simply opt for the wide variety of pastries and muffins, breakfast breads, traditional cheese pies, cereals and other traditional breakfast items at the cold stations.

And that's just breakfast.

Lunch and dinner offers another dozen different entrees, from roasted meats and casserole style dishes to stews, accompanied by 12 different types of vegetables, three different starches and three different types of rice.

The cold menu will remain fairly stable, even as the hot menu will rotate on an eight-day cycle.

“In Atlanta in 1996 we had a five-day cycle menu but realized that there was too much repetition,” Crane explains. “Items came back up too quickly, so it seemed like the menu never changed even though we had a lot of variety in it.”

Four years later in Sydney, the company over-compensated with a 10-day cycle that was eventually deemed too long. The eightday cycle, like Baby Bear's bed and porridge, may finally be “just right,” Crane hopes.

Peaks and Valleys
The cycle must cope with the expected peaks and valleys of demand during the 16-day extent of the Olympics and the additional 11 days of the Paralympics.

“There's definitely a peak and it usually hits about Day Three or Four since some people don't move into the Village until after the opening ceremonies,” says Stapleton. “Then it stays at peak levels until about two days before closing ceremonies, when people start departing.”

As for daily rushes, “the peak time in the big cafÈ, believe it or not, is 9 p.m. for dinner,” Stapleton says, “probably because a later dinner is the European standard. In any case, we're usually very busy from 9 to 10:30 or 11 p.m.”

Lunch is a little bit later as well— anywhere from 1 to 3—at least based on Aramark's experience in Sydney and Atlanta. Breakfast is at a more standard (for Americans) 6 to 7:30 or 8 a.m.

Of course, circumstances can force changes. The Olympic Village is considerably further from the city and from the tourist sites than in other recent Olympics and that may prompt more Village residents to stick around rather than venture out. If so, the various onsite foodservice operations could see an uptick in demand compared to Sydney and Atlanta.

But whatever the outcome, the operations team is confident it will be able to handle any contingency.

“We've always had enough budget to staff all the areas appropriately and we've really never in my experience gotten caught understaffed,” Stapleton claims.

Her big concern is just getting the management team together and “making it click. There are always a few hiccups in the beginning. But in the end, it's just like a giant restaurant opening.