Sodexo wins three-year contract with Great Western Academy

Sodexo has been awarded a three-year contract by Great Western Academy to provide catering, cleaning, washroom and pest control services.

Great Western Academy (GWA) is a new secondary school for North Swindon, due to open in September 2018. It will open on a phased basis, admitting pupils aged 11-18 years until reaching a maximum of 1200 pupils, including sixth formers, in the coming years.

Sodexo will introduce its new modern school food and dining environment offer, ’Food & Co by Sodexo’, which moves away from tradition 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 would like to eat it, as well as their preferred dining environment and experience.

The catering provision will include breakfast, morning break and lunch, offering pupils an exciting range of cosmopolitan foods that have been tailored to meet the government’s school food standards. Sodexo will be working with GWA to implement their Agents for Change programme whereby pupils will work closely with the catering team to drive service development.

Sodexo will self-deliver the majority of services within scope of the contract by employing an onsite catering and cleaning workforce, using its supply chain partners to deliver more specialist elements.

Contract manager, Vanessa Mole, has already started meeting prospective parents and pupils at GWA’s open evening, providing information about our menus and food quality.

Graham Davis, Principal of GWA said, “Great Western Academy aims to radically improve the life chances of our learners by setting the highest standards in everything that we do. This includes providing an excellent food service in a clean and vibrant environment. We were very impressed with Sodexo’s pupil-centered, insight-led approach and look forward to welcoming them to the team and enjoying their healthy and tasty food.”

Vanessa Mole, Contract Manager, Sodexo UK and Ireland commented; “We are delighted to be working with Great Western Academy and excited to be introducing our new food offer, Food & Co. by Sodexo, to the school. Our core values are strongly aligned and this provides us with a really strong foundation from which to build a partnership.”

This is Sodexo’s second contract win in the Swindon area, having recently won the contract to provide integrated facilities management (FM) services to seven schools via a PFI contract with ESSL (Education Services Swindon Ltd.)

As of September, Sodexo will serve over 4,000 schools meals in the Swindon area every day.