Friday, October 2, 2026

The AI Boom's Hot New Caterer

For this catering business, AI-related growth won't last forever...
 
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The AI Boom's Hot New Caterer

By Joel Litman, chief investment officer, Altimetry


The company behind your stadium hot dog just became an AI stock...

Food-service giant Aramark (ARMK) runs dining halls, arenas, and hospital cafeterias. But lately, it has been feeding a new customer... the crews building AI data centers.

Earlier this month, Aramark signed on to serve a workforce community of up to 4,000 trade workers at a new AI data center in Texas. That means meals around the clock, housekeeping, gyms, and even "resort style" entertainment.

It sounds like overkill for a construction site. But electricians and plumbers are scarce. Developers are competing to keep them.

Microsoft president Brad Smith called the electrician shortage the single biggest obstacle to the company's U.S. data-center expansion.

And Aramark CEO John Zillmer told an investor conference this month that the U.S. could be short about 500,000 skilled laborers by 2028.

For Aramark's part, it expects $400 million to $500 million in added revenue from data-center contracts in fiscal 2027 and 2028. It has raised its guidance twice this year.

The market has noticed, bidding shares up 45% this year. It has more than doubled over the past five years.

Here's the thing – it's true that these AI contracts are a boon for Aramark. But folks hoping to ride the stock higher might have missed the boat.

It seems investors have already cashed this check... and there isn't much left on the table for stragglers.

Data-center crews pay well, but they don't stay forever...

Aramark earns money per person it feeds and houses. So more workers on a site means more revenue.

But when construction wraps up, most of the crew moves on... and so does all that revenue.

Citi analyst Leo Carrington told Bloomberg that caterers' data-center revenue is "effectively linear" to headcount. That means as projects near completion, revenue will drop alongside headcount.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for data-center caterers.


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Bloomberg's research arm expects the whole market to peak at about $3.2 billion per year in 2032 – then shrink by half as the building frenzy slows.

Aramark's slice tops out around $1.2 billion per year in 2033.

Investors are right that data centers brought in some cash for Aramark. But the company already generates nearly $20 billion annually. Even at the peak, these AI contracts would add less than 6% to sales.

So while we agree that Aramark is an interesting beneficiary of the AI revolution, we don't expect to see anything transformative in its numbers.

Investors disagree, though – they think the business is booming...

We can see this through our Embedded Expectations Analysis ("EEA") framework.

The EEA starts by looking at a company's current stock price. From there, we can calculate what the market expects from the company's future cash flows. We then compare that with our own cash-flow projections.

In short, it tells us how well a company has to perform in the future to be worth what the market is paying for it today.

Aramark's Uniform return on assets ("ROA") held steady around 20% from 2014 through 2018. Then the pandemic shut down stadiums and college campuses.

Returns crashed to 4% in 2020. They've been climbing back ever since, reaching 15% last year. Wall Street analysts expect Aramark to hit 17% this year and 20% next year.

That's already an impressive rebound. But at today's price, investors expect Aramark's Uniform ROA to reach 21% by 2030.

That would be its best level since 2018. Take a look...

In other words, the market is assuming analysts are right about next year... and then some.

They're convinced Aramark will hold onto those gains even after data-center crews go home.

Aramark earned its seat at the AI table...

But investors already paid for it. That growth won't carry on forever. And it's just a small slice of a $20 billion business.

After a 45% run this year, the stock is priced for far too much. We doubt Aramark's returns will get back to where they were before the pandemic – at least, not from the AI boost alone.

At today's price, the good news is already baked in.

Regards,

Joel Litman
October 2, 2026


 

Cutting red tape and CO2

How measures in a US Senate permitting reform bill could reduce emissions ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
Read in browser

Sometimes a win for the climate is as mundane as speeding up bureaucratic processes. Today, we look at how a permitting reform bill presented by a bipartisan group of US senators could reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

And, as California and the US West sizzle during an unusually hot autumn, a reminder of the health hazards of high temperatures. More than 34,600 people died from the brutal heat in five Western European countries over the summer.

Subscribe to Bloomberg.com for unlimited access to all our coverage.

Clearing the way

By Zahra Hirji and Leslie Kaufman

After years of false starts, a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday produced a 417-page permitting reform bill, designed to make it easier to build everything from long-distance power lines to renewable energy projects to natural gas pipelines. A vote is not expected until after the midterm elections.

That leaves plenty of time to argue over what the sprawling compromise would actually do for the climate: decrease or increase US greenhouse gas emissions?

The answer isn’t obvious. Faster permitting could unlock clean-energy projects that have been stuck waiting for approvals, while also making it easier to build pipelines and other fossil-fuel infrastructure. Researchers are now starting to put numbers around those competing effects.

The Marmac 306, a cable laying barge, in the New York Harbor in New York, US, on Thursday, July 17, 2025. The crew of an American-flagged barge will lay cable to connect the Empire Wind farm to New York City’s grid — a milestone for an embattled sector. Photographer: Bryan Derballa/Bloomberg
A cable-laying barge in the New York Harbor in July, 2025. The crew were charged with laying cable to connect the Empire Wind farm to New York City’s grid.
Photographer: Bryan Derballa/Bloomberg

One new analysis published this week offers a sense of the potential climate payoff from an important piece of the legislation: transmission reform. Streamlined rules making it faster to connect energy projects to the grid and expand energy connection, or transmission, between regions could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 71 million metric tons, or 9%, in 2035 compared to a non-reform scenario.

The modeling, conducted by the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and consulting company Greenline Insights, does not comprehensively address the bill’s laundry list of proposed reforms. It’s only focused on the transmission piece and on how changes would affect four regions of the country that account for about half of US electricity demand.

Despite those limitations, C2ES president Nathaniel Keohane told Bloomberg News he’s confident the bill “on net is good for the economy, it’s good for consumers, and it’s good for climate.” The estimated impact on power-sector emissions is particularly notable, he added: “We’re talking gigaton-scale emissions reductions over time.”

Rob Gramlich, president of the consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC, said that although the package is technology neutral — meaning it doesn’t favor specific types of energy generation — it “enables a clean energy future” that’s “just going to be very hard to get” otherwise.

Consider data centers. One way to power them quickly is to build gas infrastructure on site. “This bill would open up a lot more options,” Gramlich said, adding that there are many states, utilities and technology companies looking to clean up their power supply.

Read More: Senate Permit Deal Would Force Data Centers to Pay Grid Cost

Other climate science and policy experts seem to agree. In a post on X, Jane Flegal, a former Biden administration climate official who is now a senior fellow at the liberal think tank Searchlight Institute, called the bill “awesome.”

Read more

Transmission rules

71 million

The number of metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that transmission reform would cut in 2035 compared to a non-reform scenario.

Net benefit

“We’re talking gigaton-scale emissions reductions over time.”

Nathaniel Keohane

President

Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

Deadly summer

More than 34,600 people died in five Western European countries due to heat this summer as the region posted its hottest June, July and August on record, according to a Bloomberg compilation of mortality estimates from different agencies.

Spain saw its deadliest summer since records began in 2015, with 5,805 excess deaths attributable to heat between May 15 and Sept. 30, according to data from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III that was made public on Thursday. In France, three heat waves led to an estimated 7,824 deaths, the highest toll since at least 2015, according to provisional figures from the national public health agency. Germany, the UK and Belgium also recorded elevated heat-related mortality.

“Spain has recorded 61 heat wave days over the summer, with four heat waves, a fifth in September and extreme heat episodes in May,” said Diana Gómez, head of the mortality monitoring system at ISCIII. “All of that has resulted in an increase of deaths attributable to heat.”

Heat can exacerbate existing illnesses and is particularly dangerous for vulnerable people including young children, the elderly and workers exposed to high temperatures over long periods of time. Western Europe faced extraordinary heat throughout the summer, with average temperatures for the region 2.5C above the average between 1991 and 2020, according to the latest monthly report by Earth observation program Copernicus.

Volunteer firefighters spray a square with cooling water during high temperatures in Prague, Czech Republic, on Sunday, June 28, 2026. The heat wave was fueled by a high-pressure heat dome and atmospheric shifts linked to a developing El Niño. Photographer: Milan Jaros/Bloomberg
Volunteer firefighters spray a square with cooling water during high temperatures in Prague, Czech Republic, on Sunday, June 28, 2026.
Photographer: Milan Jaros/Bloomberg

European data indicate temperatures over the summer were the highest since at least 1979 across virtually all of England, Wales and Belgium, as well as most of France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. The previous record was set in 2003, when countries including the UK, France and Germany recorded tens of thousands of heat deaths and healthcare services struggled to cope with cases of heat stroke, forcing authorities to improve emergency responses and hot-weather services.

On 17 days this year, at least 60% of Western Europe experienced temperatures above 30C (86F), according to a Copernicus report released on Friday. That compares with 11 days under the same conditions during the summer of 2003. A record 52% of the European continent experienced temperatures of 38C or higher during the summer, which qualifies as “very strong” heat stress under the Copernicus ratings system.

Read more

Your Zero listen

China is a hotbed of innovation, filling nearly half of the world’s new patents every year. Much of that work is in the world of clean tech and a whole ecosystem is growing to help make these breakthroughs commercial.

This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Tonny Xie, chairman of Bluetech Clean Air Alliance, a China-based nonprofit organization that’s helping to grow the next era of climate startups. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

Listeners’ Choice
Calling all fans of Zero! We’re excited to announce that Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast has been selected as a finalist for the Signal Podcast Awards in the Sustainability & Environment category. Now it’s up to you to help Zero win. Please vote for your favorite podcast by October 15.

More from Green

🎥Attention all filmmakers!

Working on a short documentary about climate change? Don’t miss your chance to submit it to the Bloomberg Green Docs film competition. Grand prize: $25,000. This is the final day submissions will be accepted.

See official rules at bloomberg.com/greendocs.

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  • Energy Daily for a daily guide to the energy and commodities markets that power the global economy
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The AI Boom's Hot New Caterer

For this catering business, AI-related growth won't last forever...   ...