Chris Bigelow, The Bigelow Companies, stops by the new Venues Today offices to talk food and take a photo with Staff Reporter Jessica Boudevin and the VT News Giraffe. (VT Photo)
The Wall Street Journal reported that concessionaire and facilities management company Aramark is exploring an initial public offering.
Aramark has had a long history as both a public and private company. Davre Davidson founded the company that would ultimately become Aramark in Los Angeles in 1939. In 1959, Davidson partnered with another food vending entrepreneur, William Fishman, to form Automatic Retailers of America, which went public a year later.
The company went private again in 1983, when then-CEO Joseph Neubauer led a group of private-equity firms in buying out the company in an effort to prevent a hostile takeover. After acquiring WearGuard and Galls in the 1990s and purchasing ServiceMaster Management Services in 2001, Aramark returned to public ownership with an IPO, with revenues at about $8 billion. In 2006, Neubauer again led a group of investors to acquire all outstanding shares of the company, a move that was completed Jan. 26, 2007.
Aramark is reportedly in early discussions with banks and analysts about going public, with its most recent quarterly report showing sales at $6.9 billion. The company provides food services, facilities management and uniform and apparel to health care institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, parks and destinations and businesses. Aramark now employs roughly 250,000 employees and has a presence in 22 countries. A large part of its business is in providing concessions and facilities management to sports and entertainment venues, with 38 national sports teams as clients.
“They are doing quite well now and should continue to do so,” said Chris Bigelow, president of The Bigelow Companies, which provides design and management advisory services to stadiums, arenas, convention and civic centers, colleges and universities and other facilities. “When companies go public they will state this will give them access to more capital and growth opportunities. … The real result for the customer is it is a nonevent, unless they were an investor in the company.”
Bigelow stated that he doesn’t believe anything will change for Aramark’s clients as a result of the company going public. “There are excellent companies that are both private and public in our industry,” he said. “The corporate structure has very little to do with the performance of a foodservice management company. The real difference is the quality of their on-site management team.”
Interviewed for this story: Chris Bigelow, (816) 483-5553