The Top 50’s nine largest K-12 market operators

In this adjunct listing to the full Top 50, we break out the nine entries that generated at least $100 million in the K-12 Schools dining market in 2021. Because the three largest firms—Compass Group, Sodexo and Aramark—all conflate their college and K-12 business under the heading of Education in their public reporting, it is difficult to break out how much of the business is done in each market individually, so the numbers listed here for the three are FM estimates. Generally, we split the difference, assuming about half of the total Education business for each is being done in higher education and half in K-12.

It is also important to note that each of the “Big Three” have fiscal years that end in the early fall, so their fiscal 2021 K-12 business basically covers the 2020-21 school year and summer 2021 while other Top 50 companies that report calendar year results (that is, January-December) reflect post-vaccine fall 2021 rather than pre-vaccine fall 2020 in their numbers, something that significantly affected in-person attendance figures, and hence meal counts.

In any case, it is clear that Compass, Sodexo and Aramark are by far the largest contract players in the K-12 market, with six other FM Top 50 firms doing at least $100 million in this area. It should also be noted that Compass, Sodexo and Aramark don’t distinguish food and non-food operations in reporting the amount of business they do in “education” or any other segment, so that should be kept in mind when reviewing FM Top 50 data.