Sodexo, the world’s largest services company, has won a 5 year, £2.8m catering contract extension with Quaerere Academy Trust in Sandwell, West Midlands.
This is a further contract win for Sodexo’s new school food brand, Food & Co. by Sodexo, and comes in the wake of recent announcements of new contracts with Wellspring Academy Trust and ESSL (Education Services Swindon Ltd) in Swindon.
Quaerere is a multi-academy trust in Sandwell, West Midlands, made up of two secondary schools both with sixth form provision- Q3 Academy Great Barr and Q3 Academy Langley – including the Grace Payne Aspiration Centre, a specialist centre that provides entrepreneurial training as well as an RAF Cadets detachment. Q3 Academy Langley is a growing school with pupil numbers rising to 1,500 over the course of the contract.
The schools will benefit from Sodexo’s new modern school food and dining room offer, ‘Food & Co. by Sodexo’, which deinstitutionalises traditional school dinners and has been developed following research conducted with pupils in key stages 2, 3 and 4 (ages 7-16) to understand the type of food they like, how they like to eat it, as well as their preferred dining environment and experience. The Trust will benefit from capital investment, funded by Sodexo, to refresh and expand their catering facilities to better meet the needs of pupils.
Matt Garner, Managing Director for Schools, Sodexo UK and Ireland commented; “We are delighted to have retained this contract and look forward to building on our relationship with the roll out of our new school food offer, Food & Co. by Sodexo.”
Gary Hargreaves, Finance Director for the Trust said; “Sodexo has become a trusted partner. We’re keen to extend our relationship with them and leverage our shared experience as we seek to expand the Quaerere Academy Trust to partner with other passionate educators in both the secondary and primary sectors across and beyond Sandwell.”
Sodexo currently works with over 125 state schools and has more than 10 years’ experience delivering integrated facilities services to schools across the UK and Ireland. The new Schools by Sodexo offer is designed to meet the needs of multi academy trusts who are increasingly looking for suppliers who can offer greater standardisation, consistency and integration of facilities services across their schools, allowing them to focus on providing high-quality education for today’s young people.