Aramark

A labor union filed criminal complaints against Aramark Corp., the Philadelphia-based global food services company that runs the concessions at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Park. Workers United, in a nationwide protest yesterday, accused Aramark of stealing from its employees by collecting union dues from their paychecks, but not turning them over to their union. However, it is not entirely clear who their union is. Until March, Philadelphia-area Aramark workers, like many Aramark workers around the nation, were represented by Unite-Here, a union created in 2004 by the merger of two other unions.

Aramark Corp., one of Philadelphia's largest companies, has hired a former PepsiCo executive to succeed longtime chief executive Joseph Neubauer. Eric J. Foss joined the privately held food-services and facilities-management giant as its new president and CEO Tuesday. Foss, 53, retired as CEO of Pepsi Beverages Co., a $20 billion division of the soft-drink maker, on Dec. 9. That makes the CEO succession at Aramark something of Pepsi generation phenomenon. The 70-year-old Neubauer had held several senior positions at PepsiCo in the 1970s, including the head of its Wilson Sports Goods division before joining what was then called ARA Services at its chief financial officer in 1979.

Aramark Corp. said yesterday that its net income fell 18.8 percent in what may be the Philadelphia company's last quarter as a public company. Weaker results at baseball stadiums and national parks where Aramark provides food and other services helped cut earnings to $74.36 million, or 40 cents a share, in its fourth quarter ended Sept. 29 from $91.55 million, or 49 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Other factors in the decline included costs related to the shutdown of an apparel business, expensing employee stock options, and $5.7 million in expenses from the proposed sale of the company to an investment group led by chairman and chief executive officer Joseph Neubauer.

Philadelphia-based food-service giant Aramark said Tuesday that it would eliminate the use of all pork from animals bred using gestation crates in its U.S. supply chain by 2017. In announcing the plan with the Humane Society of the United States, Aramark joined dozens of other food-service companies, restaurant chains, and supermarkets that have pledged to end their reliance on suppliers who house breeding pigs in confining crates their whole lives. "Aramark is proud to stand in partnership with other industry leaders and supply-chain partners to transition away from gestation crates in a timely fashion," said Kathy Cacciola, Aramark's senior director of environmental sustainability.

The evening meal was long over when the female inmate started cleaning the restroom near the staff dining room at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center. The 31-year-old Latino inmate was part of a select group of women assigned to work in the prison kitchen with male employees of Aramark, the giant food service company that holds a city contract to feed prison inmates. And like many places in the Philadelphia prisons, this area had its guard posts reduced - from two to one - as part of a city effort to save money.

Aramark Corp. agreed yesterday to acquire the food-and-beverage concessions and venue-management units of Ogden Corp. for $236 million in cash and debt. Aramark would pick up 140 contracts to provide concessions at several large ballparks and arenas in the country, including Veterans Stadium and the Waterfront Entertainment Centre in Camden. The acquisition is the second-largest for Aramark, which is based in Center City. It includes $11 million in assumed debt, and is expected to close in the calendar second quarter, both companies said.

Aramark Corp.'s shares soared yesterday after the Philadelphia food-service company received a $5.8 billion cash buyout offer led by chairman and chief executive officer Joseph Neubauer. Neubauer and a group of private-equity firms offered $32.00 a share, a 14 percent premium over Friday's close of $28.11. Aramark's publicly traded class B shares zoomed past the offer price to close yesterday at $33.90 a share - a 20.6 percent, or $5.79, gain from Friday. "The offer seems a bit low to us," Morgan Stanley analyst Christopher P. Gutek said in a note to investors.

For a $12.6 billion company, Aramark Corp. sure is quiet about when it has a strong year. But the Philadelphia food-service provider and uniform-rental company did increase sales for its fiscal year ended Oct. 1 by 2 percent. Not bad in a year when revenue growth has eluded most major companies. Gimme Credit L.L.C. analyst Vicki Bryan wrote in a note that it was the first time in years revenue was up in all of Aramark's business segments, even its uniform and career-apparel unit, which she described as "long-struggling.

The chairman and chief executive of Aramark Corp., Joseph Neubauer, and his wife, Jeanette, have pledged $1 million to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to endow the museum's senior conservator job, to be called the Neubauer Family Chair of Conservation. The job is held by P. Andrew Lins. The donation matches a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help the museum endow its senior positions. H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, chairman of the museum's board of trustees, said that since the museum began its current capital campaign, it has received money to endow six senior staff positions and five fellowships.

Bundles of federal stimulus dollars are earmarked to make school cafeteria food more nutritious and school buildings more energy-efficient. Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. stands to benefit from that windfall and from new efforts by schools to economize - if it can convince supervisors that a for-profit enterprise will act in students' best interest. Aramark manages food service, facilities, or both for about 500 school districts across the country. (But not Philadelphia's.) Dennis Maple runs the company's K-12 arm, which serves 2.8 million meals a day to schoolchildren and cares for 153 million square feet of space in schools.