5 things: Revolution Foods acquires Top 50 firm Better4You Meals

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:

Revolution Foods has announced the acquisition of FM Top 50 firm Better4You Meals, a leading provider of school and senior citizen fresh, vended meal services in California and Nevada. The company says the acquisition will enable it to grow its production and community impact by approximately 50%. The deal marks the second acquisition of an FM Top 50 firm in the last month, following Chartwells Higher Ed's purchase of Fresh ideas Food Service Management.

Read more: Revolution Foods Acquires Better 4 You Meals, Creator of Award-winning Nutritious Meals for Schools

Paris-based Elior Group, parent of FM Top 50 firm Elior North America, announced a 20.3% organic revenue increase for the first nine months of its 2021-22 fiscal year compared with the first nine months of the previous year. International sales, which includes North America, increased 28.8% over the same period and track with similar recent gains among other major international foodservice contract firms that show the industry broadly recovering from the disruptions and slowdowns of the COVID pandemic.

Related:5 tech things: Airport opens nine-concept ghost kitchen to serve travelers

While Elior didn't break out numbers specifically for North American operations in its announcement, it did note that in the U.S., contract wins/renewals in Q3 included Apollo Global Management; Cooley LLP; correctional facilities in Cobb County, Ga.; Lake County and East Chicago School Districts in Indiana; Sioux Falls University; Northwest Mississippi Community College; Westerwood senior care homes in Columbus, Ohio; community meals for the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association in Tennessee; and the JWCH Institute Health Center in Los Angeles.

Read more: Elior Group:  Nine-Month Revenues for 2021-2022

Twenty-two Republican attorneys general have sued to block the Agriculture Department’s newly announced guidance making student-lunch funds contingent on enforcing the Biden administration’s gender-identity agenda. The attorneys general asked a federal court in Tennessee to prevent the USDA from withholding food assistance from schools “that continue to separate students by biological sex in appropriate circumstances,” including sports, locker rooms, showers and restrooms.

Related:5 things: Compass North America at 112% of 2019 organic revenues in Q3

Read more: 22 states sue to stop Biden administration from linking school lunches to gender-identity agenda

UCLA Housing-Dining has opened Epicuria at Ackerman, its first restaurant in the Ackerman Union in the space previously occupied by Wolfgang Puck Express. Al Ferrone, UCLA Dining’s senior director of food and beverage, and his team opened Epicuria at Covel, an all-you-care-to-eat restaurant, in fall 2021. The new restaurant is not all-you-care-to eat, but just like at the original location, meal plan holders can use their “swipes” to pay.

Read more: UCLA Dining brings fresh Mediterranean cuisine to Ackerman Union

After almost 20 years of contracting out to private companies, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) in Canada is bringing some 4,000 healthcare workers, including 283 in food service positions in the Coastal Community of Care at VCH, back into the public system. “Bringing these integral health-care services workers back in-house means patients will receive more dedicated health care and workers can look forward to building a career in the health sector and a better future for their families,” said Mable Elmore, Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ Services and Long Term Care.

Read more: Vancouver Coastal Health welcomes back 283 hospital food-service workers

Bonus: Viewpoint: Select the right QA company with these 5 questions

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]