Its latest win hails a new five-year contract with the University of Chichester providing breakfast, lunch and evening meals as well as Costa Coffee outlets, conference and banqueting services across two campuses for 4,500 students rising to 5,000 over the course of the contract.

Other recent wins include School of Oriental and African Studies, Lincoln University, John Leggot College, Henley College Coventry and Bracknell and Wokingham College, as well as significant contract renewals such as Charterhouse, Northern College, Kingston University and Oxford High School for Girls (part of the Girls Day School Trust).

This dramatic sector growth follows a restructure of the education team, headed up by Paul Fisher, director of education at Elior. With a focus on training, teamwork and specialisation of roles, the team has gone from strength to strength.

Commenting on the success, Paul Fisher says: “Over the last 18 months, we’ve developed a strong team ethos, a ‘family’, playing to each others strengths and experience to deliver a consistent approach and real understanding of what clients and their customers want. We constantly strive to offer our clients an outstanding customer experience. Our award winning company-wide eXperience customer service training programme has also played a crucial part in this success. After all, it costs nothing to smile!”