Aramark served 41,200 meals Monday in Beijing, setting a record for the most food ever served by the company during its 40-year history working with the Olympics.

The total surpasses the most meals the food services company served in Athens by 21 percent. In the athlete cafeteria alone, the company served 10,580 dinners.

Yesterday’s record effort breaks down to: 19 tractor trailers full of food; 20,000 trash bags full of garbage; 6 tons of waste; and 81,000 pounds of food.

“That’s a lot of food,” said Marc Bruno, Aramark’s president of stadiums and arenas, sports and entertainment.

The bulk of the service took place in the athlete’s residence, the Olympic Village, in a dining room that seats 5,000 people. The dining room is the size of three football fields and considered to be the largest one ever constructed in the world.

“The quantity of food these athletes eat puts me to shame,” Bruno said. “The food for them is fuel for their competition. When you think of 10,580 dinners last night, it’s really one and three quarter times that (because of how much they eat per meal). It’s almost 18,000 (pounds) from a quantity and calorie perspective.”

Aramark is operating at its 14th Olympic Games. Its first was 1968 in Mexico City.

In Beijing, it’s running food services in two media centers, two media villages and the Olympic Village, where athletes stay and dine. It is employing 7,000 people, and expects to serve 3.5 million meals to 28,000 people over the course of the Olympics.

The 41,200 meals served Monday represents the peak for Aramark, Bruno said. Over the coming days, as athletes get knocked out of competition or see their events conclude, he expects the meal count to drop as athletes begin leaving the Olympic Village.

For now, though, it remains home to people from 205 countries. Monday night, Dirk Nowitzki and the German basketball team as well as the U.S. “Redeem Team” ate in the dining hall.

“From that perspective, the dining room is really the only place they can come to relax,” Bruno said. “Everywhere else the media is there. The cameras are there. This is the one place they can unwind.”