@CatherineFlick I'm sure they are roughly as shitty as any other profit-seeking plc, but a rise in profits really doesn't tell us anything useful about the quality of their food. (If their profits fell, would you conclude that their food must now be excellent?) They made £2bn profit on about £30bn turnover, which doesn't sound like wild profiteering. £20bn of that turnover was in N America. I mean, maybe the UK school dinners are a ripoff, but it's a claim that requires more evidence than this.

@CatherineFlick Also, look at the dates. The latest possible period an annual financial report issued in Nov 2023 could cover starts in Nov 2022. The previous year (the one we compare against to get a 30% rise) must have started in Nov 2021 or earlier. COVID restrictions in England ended in April 2022. I'm not exactly gobsmacked that a catering firm is more profitable in the first full financial year without COVID restrictions.

@CatherineFlick Oh, absolutely. But UK schools are a tiny part of what the company does. We're all looking at that headline 30% figure, which relates to all sorts of activity, 2/3 of it in N America, and drawing dire conclusions about UK school meals. Global profits went sharply down in 2020/21 (hurrah!) and came back up again in 2022/23 (boo!). The figures for Le Manoir probably look fairly similar, so I'm not convinced that that in itself tells us very much about the quality of school meals.