How to feed the Olympics, a problem in procurement
It’s a daunting task to feed 15,000 people no matter what, but if food is fuel, the chefs feeding the athletes at Olympic Village are somewhat responsible for how these athletes perform. Events management and catering group Sodexo Live takes that responsibility seriously. What results is an incredible feat of logistics, combining sustainable sourcing, diversity of options, and ensuring all athlete’s nutritional needs are met by some combination of the 500 dishes that will be served.
But it’s not just baseline nutritional needs that need to be met — athletes are coming from all over the world, with their own culinary traditions. The Olympics are supposed to be a place of cultural exchange, and this extends to the food. Sodexo Live has brought on partner chefs Amandine Chaignot, Akrame Benallal, and Alexandra Mazzia to serve dishes like quinoa muesli, chickpea pommade, and gnocchi in chicken sauce to showcase modern French cuisine. Other chefs on the team are charged with creating everything athletes will need to eat, both before and after the competition.
And:
One of the funny parts that we’ve learned is that we think they’re all athletes and in their physical prime, so distance doesn’t matter. But actually it does, because our dining hall is extremely large, it’s over 220 meters long and 24 meters wide. Walking from one side to the other takes five minutes. And these competitors, they’re not going to go that far, they’re going to really ensure the minimum steps so they don’t spend too much energy. Nobody expected that.
And:
Bananas are an athlete’s favorite thing. We anticipate getting two or three million bananas. At peak time there will be 15,000 people living in one place. So that means per day, at peak time, we’re going to go up to 40,000 meals. At the end of the entire journey, it’s over 1.2 million meals. I was working on quantifying the volume of coffee, how to produce it. And then someone said, “Can we get the coffee grinds back to us to use as a fertilizer?” So what’s the volume of grinds we’ll produce? I’’s 20 tons of coffee, so that means it’ll be 40 tons of coffee residue. But all of this is going to be used to grow mushrooms.
Finally:
Americans have been extremely vocal about what they want. They were more picky and sensitive about having a lot of gluten-free items, and a more vegetable-based diet.
The piece and interview is by Jaya Saxena, the reproduced answers are from Estelle Lamont. Here is the entire piece, via the ever-excellent The Browser.