Airport Experience® News - ACDBE & Small Business Issue 2024

Right: One of Aero Service Group’s most prominent operations is Stone Arch Craft Beer & Food at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

THE RELUCTANT RESTAURATEUR A Pivot To Help His Aging Parents Turned Into A New Career For Cheng Lor

BY SARAH BELING

Cheng Lor’s path to founding, operating and growing Aero Service Group – now in its second successful decade in business – has been a long and winding road. A refugee whose family fled the deadly Killing Fields of Cambodia in a dangerous six-year journey through slave camps, landmines and refugee camps before migrating to the United States, Lor’s first brush with the hospitality industry was working as a cashier and busboy, and later, assisting his parents in establishing their own restaurants near their new home in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. “I worked in a Chinese restaurant that my dad worked at when I had just turned 14,” says Lor. “I was a busboy and a cashier for six months, and I said, ‘I will never do this again. I’m going to school.’” Lor went on to study accounting and political science and later, pursue his J.D. (Juris Doctor) degree. But while working as a corporate attorney for Minneapolis based firm, Lindquist & Vennum , he was pulled back into hospitality. This time, he was motivated by a desire to help his parents with their retirement. “As refugees to this country, retirement planning was never on their radar. Feeding the kids and getting them to school was always the number-one priority,” says

Lor. Drawing on what he’d learned from his parents’ restaurants, he began to investigate the possibility of opening an airport concessions space. To do so, Lor reconnected with fellow Twin Cities restaurateur Bob Helman, who he remembered from their time as neighboring restaurant operators in a downtown St. Paul office building. In 2003, Lor met with Helman, then working for sandwich brand Erbert & Gerbert’s , about a potential airport location opportunity. The two teamed up with Bob’s colleague Michelle Ranum and another concessionaire, Sayed Ali of Creative Host Services (now SSP America ) to pitch an Erbert & Gerbert’s location in response to an RFP from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). They didn’t win the RFP, but when Ali offered them an opportunity to operate a Ben & Jerry’s and Stage Deli with him in 2005, Lor took the chance, and jumped with both feet into the airport concessions space. “I had no intentions of ever going back to food and beverage,” says Lor. “Mr. Ali saw what I was trying to do, which was really to build a retirement portfolio for my Mom and Dad, and offered us an opportunity,” he adds. “We would not be here today without Mr. Ali and the ACDBE program.”

Above: Cheng Lor, president, Aero Service Group.

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AX NEWS JULY/AUGUST 2024