Mark This! is a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark’s varied lines of business. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them--building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
Mark This: Episode 47: Aramark Nexus
Host: Heather Dotchel, Corporate Communications:
Guests: Pat Leibler, President and CEO of Aramark Nexus
Heather Dotchel:
It's time to Mark This!, a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark's varied lines of business. I'm Heather Dotchel. As a member of Aramark's communications team, I see and hear amazing things that are happening across our company every day. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them, building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
The AI boom isn't just happening in the cloud. It's happening on the ground in sprawling campuses where thousands of workers need a place to sleep, eat, unwind, and feel at home. That's exactly where Aramark Nexus comes in. Today on Mark This!, we're sitting down with Pat Liebler, the newly named president and CEO of Aramark Nexus to talk about what it means to build a business at the intersection of hospitality and the world's most ambitious infrastructure build out. From offshore rigs, to national parks, to hyperscale AI data centers, it turns out Aramark's been getting ready for this moment for decades. Welcome to Mark This!
Pat Leibler:
Hi there. Thank you.
Heather Dotchel:
Can you tell your listeners a bit about your path here at Aramark?
Pat Leibler:
Sure, sure. Yeah. I've been with Aramark, it'll be 20 years in August, so a great run. Spent my first 15 years in what was Business Dining that moved into Workplace Experience Group, and then spent the last four and a half as the President and CEO of Aramark Refreshments. And jumped into this about three months ago. And as you said, a once in a generation opportunity. Excited to be here, excited with what lies ahead for Nexus in a very interesting and competitive environment.
Heather Dotchel:
Pat, what exactly is Aramark Nexus? What problem is it solving, and why is right now the moment to solve it?
Pat Leibler:
Let's start with what is Aramark Nexus, because I'll tell you a quick, funny story. I overheard my wife on a call with one of her friends recently, and they were talking about Pat's role changing at his company. And I heard her say, "Oh, yeah, he runs data centers."
And then when she hung up the phone, I said, "Hey, let me give you a little clarity so you're clear on how you articulate what I do because I really don't technically run data centers."
So what I told her, and what I'll tell you is, what is Nexus is we are a workforce community where we're building workforces out for corporations in remote areas that are supporting the build of an infrastructure, in this case data centers, in a very rapid speed, at a very rapid time for us to support them. So Nexus was assembled for that reason.
When you think about Aramark and you think of our expertise, we have a lot of expertise in all aspects of what we do to support what would be now a data center or to be now Aramark Nexus in these workforce communities. But we didn't have it under one umbrella. And that was something that we felt was going to really create a differential for us. So we built out and went out and found the best and brightest of Aramark with areas of expertise to be able to deliver that seamless experience to the client, one single point of contact, and ultimately a great experience.
Heather Dotchel:
Aramark was chosen by a leading global company to provide services across multiple AI data center locations, which was a awfully big vote of confidence right out of the gate. What do you think made Aramark the right partner? And what does winning that kind of trust tell you about where this market is headed?
Pat Leibler:
When you ask why Aramark and why were we chosen, I'll start with the brand. Aramark as a brand is very recognizable, and I think most importantly brings credibility, integrity to partner with such a big high profile company. And our expertise, we have a depth of expertise around food and beverage, facility services, transportation, hotel experiences. And so, what we did with Nexus is we are bringing the best and brightest into this group to be able to provide and deliver that brand experience that they bought and the credibility that they're expecting.
Heather Dotchel:
So there's a line of thinking emerging in this industry that the hardest part of building a data center isn't the data center itself. It's developing and retaining the workforce behind it. And you touched upon this in your introduction here as we started talking. When thousands of skilled trade workers are living and working in remote locations four months at a time, the quality of their off-shift experience becomes a direct factor in whether a project reaches fruition. How does Aramark Nexus approach that connection? What does it look like in practice to build a community people actually want to stay in? You touched upon this. Can you go into a bit more detail?
Pat Leibler:
Yeah, I would say this space of workforce housing or workforce communities has really evolved. Initially when this started, there was always a request for a place for an employee or a skilled worker to sleep and have some food and beverage options for them to eat. Right now, these big hyperscalers and big corporations are competing for the best and the brightest of these skilled workers. So they have to create an experience that is something that these individuals are expecting when they're home with their families and doing what they need to do. So their expectation of us is to really build out a higher end experience around that.
So when you think about what we're doing, we're building a city in itself, whether it's with the food hall that we have, which is basically a state-of-the-art food and beverage, on-trend hospitality experience, the housing units that we have, individual showers in each room, bathrooms in each room where, again, it is an experience that we're trying to make them as comfortable as can be. We're cleaning rooms a couple times a week where we're going in like a hotel and we're turning their beds and putting on new sheets.
And then, just the overall activities. We're building out a bar where we'll have entertainment, whether it's live entertainment and/or sporting events where they can gather to watch. So really just creating that experience that they're looking forward to after work, not just going back to their room and reading a book or jumping online, but they're looking for what's going to keep them entertained and engaged. So the next morning when they jump back on the bus to go back on site, they're happy with their experience, and they're going to work and they're delivering a high level of productivity, which is that then allowing the big hyperscaler to build this facility in a very quick period of time.
Heather Dotchel:
You're entering a space that's attracting a lot of attention. Other companies are absolutely eyeing the same opportunity. Aramark has been operating in demanding remote environments for decades, including offshore platforms, national parks, mining operations. We've actually talked about quite a few of those right here on the podcast. What is it about Aramark, our experience across remote locations, our integrated capabilities, our institutional knowledge? How do we use all of that in a way that competitors just can't replicate?
Pat Leibler:
I like to say being the inaugural President and CEO of this business, we have one opportunity to build the best team that we can possibly assemble. So what we did first and foremost was we went out, to your point, Heather, on the expertise that we have. We have a deep expertise in so many facets of what we're building here. But rather than just go out and pull the expertise from each line of business, we went out and pulled some of the best and brightest of the individual leaders in those lines of business and assembled them under one umbrella, which is Aramark Nexus to deliver that higher end experience.
So when you think about it, we'll be one single point of contact. So when you compare us to our competitors, one, we have a huge national reach and our ability to scale across the country. As you see, we do it globally as well. We can scale with speed. And then just the overall experiences that we can create is much different than our competitors.
As we look and we partner, whether it's through our self-performing transportation or we partner with one of our strategic partners when it comes to our security, we are able to manage all of that and have one single point of contact for that specific client on site, which is uniquely different than our competitors. And I would say we believe that our model is a model that is something that, as I said, nobody else can do. And they may position themselves with those capabilities, but the depth of which they can perform is limited.
Heather Dotchel:
Pat, you mentioned bringing the best of Aramark together. Do you have an example that you can share with our audience? I always like getting as concrete as possible.
Pat Leibler:
Yeah. Here's a great example. My team and I had a great experience a few weeks back. So we run similar types of services in Chile, around the mining space, and had the opportunity to go out there for three days and sit with that team to really have them show us how do they deliver this experience that we're trying to get to. And I think the biggest takeaway was the playbook has already been written. We just have to tweak it a little bit. We don't have to recreate the wheel. So there's a lot of great systems out there in this space. And for the rest of Aramark, we've tapped into some of our strength and expertise around the culinary side of what is Aramark Workplace Experience Group. And we went out there, and this team knows how to build menus and concepts around food service and build out food halls.
And again, we just went in, we took that expertise, and we've built it to be able to fit it into what we're doing here in these workforce communities. So it's really the right way to go. And the fact that we're able to do it and bring that expertise in under one umbrella with the depth of Aramark to support us, really makes us uniquely competitive.
Heather Dotchel:
Nexus brings together capabilities, as you mentioned, honed across all of Aramark's lines of business, whether that's food, facilities, supply chain, transportation, wellness, et cetera, all under one roof. And we see why that's important for the employees, but what makes that integrated single provider model so powerful for the client who's racing to build and operate critical digital infrastructure at scale?
Pat Leibler:
Yeah. What the client's looking for from their provider is somebody who's going to take that, in this case, those services that we're offering and just run with it. They've got bigger priorities, different focus. They're tasked with really building this facility as quickly as possible. They just want to be able to push that button and expect that everything we committed to and said we would deliver, we're delivering. And when we do that, that's allowing them to focus their priority on doing what they do best and expecting us to deliver on what we do best. So it really is trying to make it as easy as possible for the clients, and that's their expectation.
Heather Dotchel:
So to that end, these campuses that we're speaking about, they can span hundreds of acres. They can support thousands of workers, and it can take years at a time to do this. Walk us through what it actually takes to stand this up and what a client can expect from Nexus from day one through the life of the project.
Pat Leibler:
Yeah. Well, we've talked a lot about speed and how quickly their expectation is to get these locations built, both from the end game, which is their facility or an infrastructure, but really we're a big part of the front end of that. So you take just a rural area of land or just a plot of land that has to be engineered with utilities underground, and our role comes in at that point. Once that's completed, then we're working with building up the infrastructure for the services that we're going to provide.
So in this case, we're building out a food hall. It's a food hall that will be constructed in about a four-month period of time. So you think about what it would typically take to construct a full building. These are buildings that will be somewhat portable that after the end of this project, they could be disassembled and relocated to another project. So our focus is really building out the capabilities of the infrastructure to provide the services that we're expected to provide.
Heather Dotchel:
And once that's up and running, then what does that look like through the end of the project?
Pat Leibler:
Yeah, so it'll be staffed with, in this particular case, in the first location that we are starting to operate as today, we'll be close to 300, 350 employees that will be on the ground anywhere from food service workers to wellness people who are generating and assembling workouts for the employees. There'll be hotel workers or hospitality workers that will be taking care of the turning of rooms on any given night. We'll have a full facilities team that'll be taking care of the landscaping, guest services team that will be taking care of all the services and guest services that are taking place. So it'll be a combination of all those services that we'll be responsible for and maintaining it over the next three to four years.
And the expectation is that will this continue at that point and move on? How much of that facility may stay intact? Those are still some of the unknowns that we'll be working through as we learn this evolution of this industry and how it's going to come together. And we're confident that at the end of it, there'll be an opportunity to just continue to reinvent the next phase of things.
Heather Dotchel:
For potential clients in the early stages of planning a large scale workforce environment, whether it's a data center, an energy project or something else entirely, what do you want the most to know about what Aramark Nexus can deliver? If you had to sum it all up in a paragraph here, what would that be?
Pat Leibler:
I'd start with we're committed to learning the mission at hand that they have. Because I think that understanding that mission and what their objective is will allow us to provide the services that are needed to do that. So I think it's going in and really seeking to understand what is their purpose, what's their end game, and then what do they expect from us? And at that point, our flexibility.
Yes, our systems and our technology will be consistent. Our processes will be consistent and scaled across multiple sites, but when it comes to each site, there's a level of flexibility that's needed and expected, and that's something that we are absolutely not rigid on. We appreciate the fact that they need flexibility and we're prepared to be flexible. And I think that's a real differential. It's not a plug and play from site to site. It's a plug and play on the best practices from site to site. But when it comes to supporting their objective, our flexibility is right there with them.
Heather Dotchel:
If you'd like to know more about Aramark Nexus, visit our newsroom on Aramark.com to access more information. Pat, thanks so much for stopping by. Mark This! listeners, thanks, and see you next time.
