5 things: Compass North America revenues drop nearly a third in first half of fiscal 2021

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:

Compass Group reported a 32.8% decline in organic revenues for its North American unit, the largest company on the 2021 FM Top 50 for the half year ended March 31, 2021 compared to the same period in FY2020. The company as a whole saw a 30.4% comparative decline over the same six-month period.

In its release, Compass noted that organic revenues over the period for the North American unit were "around 70% of 2019 levels, an increase of 6% from Q4 2020. New business growth is 5.2%, with around 55% of new business wins in the first six months coming from first time outsourcing, and retention continues to be excellent at around 96.6%."

In individual market segments in North America, the Education sector "continues to see a mixed approach to reopening with hybrid curriculum delivery, especially across higher education, and has continued to be impacted by localised lockdowns. With the weighting towards ‘business’ our Business & Industry sub sectors continue to be significantly impacted by COVID with the return to offices being gradual. Our Healthcare & Senior Living business continued to expand with double digit new business growth and all sub sectors delivering organic revenue growth, which was especially strong in support services. Our remaining laundries business was disposed of during the period. Our Sports & Leisure business has remained subdued throughout the first half of the year although some events towards the end of the period started to cautiously welcome a limited number of spectators."

Related:C&U On Demand: Sodexo’s Kate Cole talks about the campus-wide meal delivery program at Marist College

Read more: Half year results announcement for the six months ended 31 March 2021

Aramark has named Bart Kaericher president and CEO of its Healthcare division, reporting to Marc Bruno, COO of the company’s U.S. Food and Facilities sector. Before joining Aramark, Kaericher served as senior vice president of sales & marketing, retention & strategic partnerships for the Morrison and Crothall divisions of Compass Group North America.

Read more: Aramark Names Healthcare Industry Veteran Bart Kaericher as President & CEO Of Company’s Healthcare Division

The Chartwells Higher Education division of Compass Group has launched its 100% Plant-Forward dining initiative for universities that will enable them to deploy concepts ranging from temporary pop-up events to fully dedicated plant-based dining halls, and to incorporate global flavors and ethnic spices to craft meatless food items that can be made-to-order, such as Braised Lentil Quinoa Burgers, Pomegranate Cauliflower Chickpea Salads and Thai Spiced Marinated Tofu. The Plant-Forward dining program has already seen successful pilot launches at select schools nationwide, including Colgate University, St. John Fisher College and Northeastern University.

Related:5 things: Permanent universal school meal bill introduced in Congress

Read more: Chartwells Higher Education Launches 100% Plant-Based Dining Hall Option in Colleges Nationwide

Smitha Haneef, who was named the new director of dining services at Harvard University in January and took over managing the program last month, discussed some of her plans and priorities in the wide-ranging interview with the Harvard Gazette. Among her priorities are to continue to leverage campus dining as "food building community" and adding that "this summer, we are going to begin to roll out some enhancements to the services we provide that align with the feedback of our community members related to nutrition, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion." Before joining Harvard, Haneef served as director of dining at Princeton University between 2014 and 2020 and previous to that was with Aramark, where she helped launch its LifeWorks Restaurant Group premium on-site restaurant division.

Read more: New dining services director brings focus on nutrition, sustainability, inclusion

An autonomous robot designed to deliver meals to hospital rooms won the Hospital Room of the Future challenge in the St. Vrain Valley School District, which had four groups of students pitching their best ideas after a year of researching and designing potential innovations for hospital operations to innovation and patient experience experts from UCHealth. The challenge was part of a partnership between the Innovation Center of St. Vrain Valley Schools and UCHealth. While this is an interesting local initiative, automation and robots are an emerging topic in healthcare foodservice (and other onsite segments) and were the topic of a recent webinar held by the Association of Healthcare Foodservices (AHF), hosted by Dan Henroid, director of nutrition & food services at the UCSF Health in San Francisco, where he already uses robots to deliver patient meals.

Read more: Food delivery by robot wins health care innovation challenge

Bonus: 55 K-12 Foodservice Heroes who made a difference over the past year

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]