CRISIS: McLaren Sells Catering Division [UPDATE: Not A Crisis]

McLaren, yes that McLaren, has a catering division. Or rather it had a catering division, as it announced just this morning that it sold it. First, the company ousts longtime CEO Ron Dennis, and now this? That icy breeze you feel is not imagined. It is the cold grip of the apocalypse.

I mean, McLaren is still making deliciously, exquisite bonkers cars like the MSO HS, but deliciously, exquisite food? It's out of that game now. I guess a car company with a catering division just made too much sense.

Absolute Taste, as the catering division was known, was sold to a company called One Event Management, which appears to consist of a catering division of its own, a pub, and a helicopter business. All of that makes sense as well.

In case you're actually wondering why the hell McLaren had a catering division, apparently almost 20 years ago McLaren realized they had a bunch of employees and no internal catering division to feed them, according to the Absolute Taste web site:

Back in 1997 Lyndy Redding and Ron Dennis formed Absolute Taste in order to provide hospitality to the McLaren F1 team.

Nearly 20 years on, the Absolute Taste team still travel the world providing fresh food and VIP hospitality to the McLaren Honda Formula 1 Team, its partners and guests throughout the grand prix season.

We are also contracted to supply the exclusive catering for the employees of McLaren Technology Group LTD at their head office in Woking, including all corporate hospitality and events for clients, sponsors and business partners. We feed up to 2,500 staff per day in the restaurant on site which is open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea.

We actually spoke to some of our McLaren sources to find out the impact this would have on the business, and they sounded truly devastated.

"Awwwwwwww MAN! I'm sad, their food rocks," one McLaren source who requested deep anonymity told us.

"Although I'm assuming they will still do our catering," our source added.

We can only hope.

UPDATE: McLaren actually emailed us to re-assure everyone that this is not a real crisis, and that this is a normal business transaction. While we thought the irony of calling it a "crisis" would make the tongue-in-cheek nature of it all quite clear, apparently it was not. The food is not in crisis. Absolute Taste will also still be providing the food for McLaren. I should like to try this food.