Key team members: Emily Ennis, vice president and assistant general counsel; Sorcha Ní Loinsigh, David Mullins, Ronan O’Neill and Laura Ginnelly.

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Aramark is a leading service and solutions provider within the Northern Europe region. We proudly support clients, partners and customers in food, facilities management, property services, and retail solutions. We look at a wide range of opportunities, where we can grow and extend our services to new and existing clients. One of the more interesting contracts we’ve worked on in this last year, is our new contract with Coillte at Avondale House, to provide various services including marketing of the park, catering for the on-site café in Avondale House, and hospitality services including guided tours of Avondale House and collaboration with EAK, the tree top walk operator. Contract negotiations were relatively protracted as this project was paused due to the interruption from Covid-19. Thankfully we had built a strong relationship with the client which permitted great collaboration throughout the process.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Very few companies have been immune to the pressures of rising inflation and changing work practices in the aftermath of the pandemic. Our core offerings of catering and facilities management services are particularly susceptible to the rising costs of food, materials and transport; and hybrid working models have made it much more difficult to predict footfall in offices and cafes. Rising costs and more unpredictable returns have necessitated frank and open discussions with clients on rates, particularly in respect of fixed price arrangements. While price is always a sensitive topic, we have found that clients are generally willing to engage and accept that conditions have changed since the relevant terms were agreed. We have been aided in this regard by sound contracting policies pursuant to which we seek to include appropriate renegotiation language and termination provisions

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

Aramark Northern Europe is committed to becoming a net zero carbon organisation by 2050. Recently, we launched our Be Well. Do Well.™ plan which is a set of policies, guides and solutions so that we can all make a better impact on the planet, and on each other. More frequently, clients are requesting detailed environmental and social governance clauses to be inserted into our Property Management and Facility Management agreements. A typical clause clients are including in contracts is that they are seeking Aramark to comply with their own ESG policies. This requires us to complete a detailed review of client policies to ensure that Aramark and the client’s business are aligned in relation to environmental concerns.