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The restaurant in the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Village, which runs 24/7 and seats up to 3,500, serves as a central gathering place for the Olympic athletes. Sodexo Live! will employ 6,000 people to cater the Village and 14 Paris 2024 Olympic and eight Paralympic competition venues, with 15 percent of those employees coming from disadvantaged communities. (Photos courtesy of Sodexo Live!)
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games have officially kicked off, and Sodexo Live! has been in training to medal at the event. Not only is the global hospitality company the sole food provider for the restaurant in the Athletes’ Village at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it is also in charge of making sure fans, the staff of the organizing committee, as well as all athletes at 14 Olympic and eight Paralympic competition venues are well fed.
Executive chef Charles Guilloy leads the Sodexo Live! teams that created 500 recipes for the athletes staying at the Olympic Village.
It’s the fourth time Sodexo Live! will be providing food services for the Olympic Games, but this year is different. In addition to the challenge of feeding thousands of people round the clock, the company has a new set of sustainability benchmarks to achieve in keeping with Paris 2024’s goal of halving its carbon footprint against that of previous Games.
It’s a key part of a larger effort to make Paris 2024 the most sustainable Olympic Games yet — a journey Convene explored in our December 2023 cover story, “Game Changer.”
From sourcing and transporting ingredients to managing food waste, every aspect of the catering lifecycle has been put under a microscope. According to a recent article published in MIT Sloan Management Review, “catering accounts for one percent of the Games’ carbon budget, including providing more than 13 million meals and 18 million beverage servings. After building and furnishing facilities, the largest remaining source of materials required (nine percent) relates to caring for participants and spectators. Food and beverages account for a large proportion here.…”
One method for diminishing the carbon impact of the Games’ F&B operations is to source as many ingredients and food products as possible from within France. The team at Sodexo Live! worked closely with Paris 2024 organizers to implement a more sustainable purchasing policy, which calls for using only in-season produce, sourcing 80 percent of the total food supply from France, and 25 percent from farms within 250 kilometers (155 miles) of Paris 2024 competition venues.
Another is relying heavily on plant-based menus. Research shows that the lifecycle of popular animal meats like beef produces significantly more carbon emissions than plant-based alternatives. Sixty percent of the food available to spectators at Paris 2024 competition venues is plant based; plant-based items comprise 33 percent of the menu options served in the Athletes’ Village restaurant.
Chef Amandine Chaignot (left) presents one of her croissants with poached egg, artichoke cream, sheep’s cheese shavings, and truffle.
Green and Global
And then there’s the global aspect of the Games that must be addressed — a unique challenge for the Sodexo Live! team is balancing sustainability with the varying nutritional needs and vast cultural differences of 15,000 athletes over a two-month period. In that time, Sodexo Live! will serve them more than 500 food items in the Athletes’ Village, in a 3,500-seat space housed within a massive film studio complex in Saint-Denis, Cité du Cinéma. Paris 2024 has adapted the 121-year-old building into a restaurant: a prime example of the Games’ efforts to use mostly existing infrastructure.
To appeal to the palates of athletes representing more than 200 NOCs (National Olympic Committees) as well as the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, the restaurant’s main dining hall has been organized into four themes — World, Halal, French, and Asian — which have been further divided into areas dedicated to international, French, Asian, African and Caribbean cuisines. A quick scroll through the #paris2024 tag on TikTok reveals an Epcot-like atmosphere, where athletes meander between stations, filling their plates from a global pu pu platter of options, from chicken gyoza (“6/10, better in Tokyo,” remarked a commentor) to Greek yogurt and mango (“five stars,” said another). Watch what two athletes had to say about the food in the videos at the end of this story.
To no surprise, French staples play a starring role. In the dining hall’s boulangerie, baguettes and croissants spill out of baskets along with other French pastries. “Giving the athletes a taste of French gastronomy” is one of the goals inscribed in the official food vision for Paris 2024, brought to life by the creative minds of Michelin-star chefs like Amandine Chaignot, Akrame Benallal, and Alexandre Mazzia.
“Our chefs and nutritionists have worked in collaboration with the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP), and various National Olympic Committees to design the recipes,” Estelle Lamotte, Sodexo Live’s director of the Olympic village, told Convene in an e-mail. “Each menu went through about seven or eight iterations before being finalized.”
An example — green lentil dahl served with coriander skyr yogurt. A creation of Charles Guilloy, executive chef for the Athletes’ Village, the vegetarian dish is made with green lentils grown in the Paris area instead of traditional red lentils, and its high-protein content also meets the needs of Olympians.
Tandir chicken, by Chef Akrame Benallal, is one of the dishes available to the athletes. In total, more than one million meals will be served during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Waste Not
Reducing the carbon footprint of the Games naturally means to make reductions, full stop. Paris 2024 has set out to use “zero plastic” in its catering operations, equipping its dining spaces with 200 water, soda, and orange juice fountains as well as reusable dinnerware, including cups.
In the kitchen, that means eliminating as much food waste as possible — which has been baked into Sodexo Live!’s operations for years. The company uses a program called WasteWatch powered by Leanpath in an effort to cut food waste in half by 2025. Sodexo Live! chefs use the WasteWatch program to collect food waste data on the venues where they work to see where they need to implement changes.
“We raise our chefs’ awareness of the global food waste issue and teach them sustainable cooking practices to help the effort,” Lamotte said. That includes, for example, “applying a circular food waste approach by incorporating trimmings or by-products, and truly using every last bit of food while mitigating waste,” she said. Additional efforts to that end include using bruised fruits and vegetables and turning bio-waste into compost or biogas.
And whatever leftovers are edible will be donated, as Paris 2024 organizers signed an agreement with three associations that collect and redistribute unsold food: the French food banks, Le Chaînon Manquant, and Les Restos du Cœur.
Jennifer N. Dienst is senior editor at Convene.
What Two of the Athletes Think
Australian boxer Tina Rahimi and Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen took to Tik-Tok to share their experiences with the food served at the Athletes’ Village.
@tinarahimii_ Replying to @BellaLuna Dining Hall Tour at the Olympic Village! #olympics #olympicvillage #halalfood ♬ original sound - Tina Rahimi
@henrikchristians1 Olympic Village food review! A little surprise at the end too! Smash like and subscribe for part 2✌🏻 #fyp #olympics #paris2024 #olympictiktok #olympicvillage #foodreview @Olympics @paris2024 @Mr.Nicho ♬ original sound - Z7duckx_Music
More Paris 2024 Games Coverage
For our December 2023 Convene CMP Series and cover story, Senior Editor Jennifer N. Dienst wrote about preparations for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.