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Tampa's Gold Cup Service Sold

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By MICHAEL SASSO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 9, 2008

TAMPA - TAMPA - Gold Cup Beverage Service, a locally owned business that has been serving Florida and other areas of the Southeast for four decades, has been purchased by food-service giant Aramark Corp.

Philadelphia-based Aramark completed its purchase of Gold Cup on June 30 for an undisclosed sum, said Aramark spokeswoman Sarah Jarvis. Gold Cup will keep its name for the foreseeable future, but will become part of the international company's refreshment services division, Jarvis said.
Aramark expects to keep all of Gold Cup's employees, which number about 100.

The company had been owned by former President and Chief Executive Officer Con Foley, David Burton, a member of the founding Burton family, and Steven Crockett.

"They customers will see the same name, the same type of service and the same employees," Jarvis said.
Foley declined to comment and referred questions to Aramark.

With the sale, Gold Cup is trading local family ownership to come under the umbrella of a multinational corporation that booked sales of $12.4 billion in 2007.

The late Jack and Elizabeth Burton founded Gold Cup in their Carrollwood home in 1971. In Elizabeth Burton's November 2003 obituary in The Tampa Tribune, son Bill Burton said his parents had failed at two previous businesses, but they sank everything they had into Gold Cup and didn't take a salary for a year.

By the late 1970s, Gold Cup was growing rapidly, Burton said at the time. He had been the company's chief executive and died in 2004.

According to its Web site, the company operates throughout Florida and in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.

Gold Cup delivers coffee to businesses, maintains coffee machines and distributes other beverage and break room supplies to about 6,500 customers.

The company's recent revenue figures weren't immediately. However, it booked revenue in 2003 of about $12 million.

Gold Cup's new parent company, in contrast, is a global giant with roughly 250,000 worldwide employees. Aramark is best known for operating the food service operations of large sports arenas, convention centers, hospitals and other institutions. For example, it runs the food service operations at the Tampa Convention Center and previously provided food service at Raymond James Stadium.
Aramark had been a publicly traded company, but went private in a leveraged buyout by its chief executive and several investment firms in early 2007.

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso@tampatrib.com or

(813) 259-7865.

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