SODEXHO PRESTIGE SERVING THE SCOUTS

Over 42,000 people attended The World Scout Jamboree which was held at Hylands Park in Chelmsford over 12 days in July. This was the 21^st Jamboree and the biggest ever celebrating the centenary of scouting. Sodexho Prestige catered for 32,160 scouts from over 200 countries, together with some 10,000 volunteer helpers over the course of the event.

Sodexho Prestige provided all the food for three meals a day for each of the participants. This included the catering for a 3,500 seater restaurant providing some 27,000 meals per day and also supplied food for the scouts who where doing their own meal preparation. In total over 1.2 million Sodexho meals where consumed over the period of the Jamboree with 220 Sodexho staff serving the food.

Sodexho purchased, through their supply chain, £3.5m worth of food. This included 81,200 eggs, 82,000 loaves of bread, 177,000 litres of milk, more than 100,000 litres of fruit juice, 14,600 kilograms of cereal, 60 tons of apples and 12,500 pounds of cheese.

Sodexho set up a warehouse 14 miles away at North Weald Airfield to hold the food and used a fleet of 66, 17 ton lorries to transport the food each night to the 16 camps within the 574 acres of the campsite at Hylands Park.

Norman Atkin-Smith, Event Organiser for Sodexho Prestige said, "The Scout Jamboree is a 12 day event that attracts scouts from all over the world.  Due to the dietary requirements of each country we have had to create menus to suit everyone, which took months of planning to put together.  This is a very exciting event for Sodexho Prestige and it has been scaled bigger than the 2012 Olympic Games which means it was a busy 12 day for us catering for 42,000 people!"  

For the 32,160 scouts preparing their own meals, Sodexho complied an informative cookery book especially for the Jamboree, written to assist scouts aged between 14-18 years old. Each scout received the book outlining planned meals for each day, step by step cookery instructions with suggested alternatives such as the scouting favourite 'eggy bread' for breakfast and also essential allergy and dietary advice. The cookbook also provided guidance on food hygiene and safety.

A huge range of Sodexho Prestige employees will contributed to this colossal event in some form, indeed on the 30^th July the Sodexho Prestige Executive Team took a hands on approach to their day at the Jamboree with the management running the hotplates, camp supply and operations.