11. 06. 12. - 15:18
Do and Co cooking up another success
Austrian catering company boss Attila Dogudan has said his team is working round-the-clock to fulfil their obligations for catering for 250,000 guests at the Euro 2012.
He said: "We are present at a completely mad number of events all around the world but the Euro is really the highlight. If we make one mistake there it's so high profile that we would never live it down."
This is the third European Football Championship where they provide the catering. He said that his organisation was present at eight stadiums covering 31 games where there were 4000 staff catering for 250,000 guests.
He said that the cost of providing the coverage would be around €40 million but they were expecting to make around €2 million profit.
He said that they had spent two years preparing the project and that included the infrastructure including tents, mobile catering services and decorations as well as the staff for the entertainment, hostesses and security and cleaning.
The 52-year-old company boss said there were also lots of things to manage for example working out what the different types of guests wanted and that the branch was more competitive now than ever before.
He said: "It is no use complaining about it, you simply have too get stuck in and we're working twice as hard now for the same money as we were five years ago."
He also said that in the next five years he plans to move slowly to one side to allow the management team to take on more responsibility and wanted to simply be on hand to offer advice. He added that he also did not want to stay so long that his sons were also old before they finally take over.
He said his dream was that his two sons aged 28 and 25 would take over the company eventually.
Despite their many other ventures alongside football, including Formula One and tennis, 75% of the turnover of the firm still comes from airline catering.
He added that with the Austrian airlines they had cut prices so much they effectively earned nothing from the contract. But he said because the airline was such a long term customer he wanted to support the restructuring and therefore was prepared to try and do what he could.
In the last business year the catering side of the company made €4.18 million profit on a turnover of €46 million.
