Jamie Oliver signs five-year deal to provide catering at Manchester City

Jamie Oliver's Fabulous Feasts has signed a five-year deal with Manchester City Football Club to provide all its catering at the Etihad Stadium through a newly-formed company - Fabulous Fan Fare.

The company is a joint venture between Oliver's events catering firm and New York-based Legends Hospitality which is partly owned by the owners of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees and provides food and beverage for both brands.

“It is our ambition to create a world class customer experience for everybody who visits the Etihad Stadium," said Tom Glick, chief commercial and operating officer at Manchester City FC.

"We are looking forward to working with these two leading brands as we continue to develop our stadium to achieve this aim."

The deal kicks off in August 2013 and will see the new company serving up food and hospitality at all the public concessions and hospitality areas of the stadium alongside the City Square fan zone outside the north end of the ground and any catering at events other than matches.

Grand scale

Dave Checketts, chairman and chief executive officer at Legends Hospitality, cited the brand recognition and market knowledge of Jamie Oliver's Fabulous Feasts in his decision to team up with the company and make a long-awaited foray into catering internationally.

It is thought that the team behind the celebrity chef's events catering firm had been in discussion with Manchester City for a number of months and Nigel Harris, managing director at Jamie Oliver's Fabulous Feasts revealed the company had big ambitions for the deal.

"Fabulous Feasts has proven over the last couple of years that we can deliver world class food on a grand scale," he said.

"Our passion for providing tasty food to the public is second to none and so we’re enormously excited to be working with Manchester City and Legends to offer what we believe will be the best stadium catering in the Premier League," added Harris.

Announcing the deal, Manchester City thanked Lindley Venue Catering for its support in in managing catering at the Etihad Stadium for the last ten years.