5 things: Dining at the Olympics has its restrictions

In this edition of 5 Things, Food Management highlights five things you may have missed recently about developments affecting onsite dining.

Here’s your list for today:

Major QSR chain Panera Bread has been working on several initiatives to adapt its catering business to how the U.S. workforce has changed in the post-pandemic world. One of the initiatives that Panera has been working on is to cater company meetings, no matter where that company’s employees are working, leveraging its footprint of more than 2,200 locations. After testing the program with its corporate and higher education clients, Panera recently rolled it out as an option for its loyalty program members and plans to make the program available to all of its customers later this year. Another initiative is offering scheduled group ordering for companies through which individual employees order and pay for their own orders at a discount, but the whole order is delivered as a group at a set day and time.

Read more: Panera adapts its catering business for the remote and hybrid workforce

The International Olympic Committee’s official “playbook” for keeping athletes and officials safe at the Tokyo Summer Games includes a laundry list of do’s and don’ts for eating at the village’s main dining halls. Among the precautions, athletes and officials at the Olympic and Paralympic Village’s dining halls are encouraged to “keep mealtimes as short as possible and leave as soon as they have finished eating,” according to a Playbook distributed by the IOC. If not competing that day, athletes and team officials should also aim to “adjust” their dining schedules to avoid busier times.

Related:Raspberry crumb cake

Read more: Eating at the Tokyo Olympics: Athletes give look at strict protocol, food inside Olympic Village dining halls

In this video interview with Food Management sister publication Waste 360, Claire Cummings Bogle, waste programs manager at Bon Appétit Management Co., discusses how the company developed new technology to assist chefs with detecting the main sources of food waste. Among its topics, the discussion addresses Bon Appetit's Waste Not app, which has been implemented across its corporate campuses and college dining halls in 33 states and is designed to assist chefs and culinary teams in preventing waste.

Read more: Episode 26: How Bon Appetit Uses Tech to Tackle Food Waste

Related:K-12 On Demand: Sodexo’s Keith Stewart talks about the rollout of the company’s new FoodIE Café program for middle schools

Healthcare Services Group, a major provider of dining and housekeeping services to the healthcare market and one of the largest foodservice contractors in the country, posted revenue for the second quarter of its 2021 fiscal year of $398.2 million, with the dining & nutrition unit contributing $195.3 million to the total. That figure was up slightly from the $192.7 million reported for dining/nutrition in Q1, but down from the $224.4 million posted in 2020 Q2 and the $233 million posted in Q2 of 2019.

Read more: Healthcare Services Group, Inc. Reports Q2 2021 Results

Matt Mazzone, president and owner of Mazzone Wedding Group LLC, and his wife, Suzy are being sued in federal court in Albany by Compass Group USA Inc. and Mazzone Hospitality LLC for alleged trademark infringement for using the Mazzone name. Mazzone Hospitality was founded by Matt Mazzone's father Angelo, who continues to run it as part of Compass' Restaurant Associates unit, to which it was sold in 2017. Previously, Mazzone Hospitality, which included both several independent restaurants and the PRIME catering and corporate dining management business, was large enough to be included in the FM Top 50 for several years before it was sold to Compass.

Read more: Matt Mazzone sued for starting catering business using his family name

Bonus: Tapas is back! Morrison Living team at Peace Village brings Spanish snacks back to senior dining

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]