Airport Experience® News - ACDBE & Small Business Issue 2024

discuss specifics behind how some of the relationships came together, but by the time the deal was announced, he’d built a group of five partners with significant histories in the industry: • Enjoy Repeat Inc., Greg Plummer • Concourse Ventures, Dale Mason Cochrane • Onsite Retailers, Sandy & Terri Roberts He worked with the airport, with developer Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Airports (URW) and those partners to take over the business, plan new brands and operate successfully, all during the pandemic. “It wasn’t like we set out to form this prime consisting of ACDBEs,” he says. “But that’s how it morphed. It made sense. The moment we had the first conversation, it made perfect sense.” • MCSB Inc., Randi Sibonga • BTII Inc., Blanton Canady

Making The Deal So, how did it come together?

Garrett Popcorn at O’Hare It’s smaller in scale than Concord Collective’s deal at LAX, but a Garrett Popcorn in Terminal 5 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is run by a pair of ACDBE operators. It happened almost by accident, says Tonja Pastorelle, owner of Pastorelle Marketing Group . The initial intent was for Garrett Popcorn Shops, a 70-year local streetside favorite, to bid directly with Pastorelle as an ACDBE partner. When that didn’t work out, she recruited fellow ACDBE Midway Restaurant Development Group to operate the shop as a licensee.

Plummer wouldn’t go deeply into the details about how the partners found each other, other than to say he worked the phones aggressively for weeks. He was already a 25% joint venture partner in SSP’s business when company officials approached him and he wanted to take a shot. But given the timing, getting capital and creating the relationships – already difficult for ACDBE operators when times are normal – were exacerbated further. “I had to go raise the money,” he says. “I probably took 100 meetings on the heels of COVID trying to find financing. It was a lot.” Through that process he was also looking for partners who brought experience in different areas of airport operations, as well. He declined to

Below: Midway Restaurant Development Group and Pastorelle Marketing Group partnered to open Garrett Popcorn Shops, a 70-year local favorite streetside, in Terminal 5 at ORD.

30

AX NEWS JULY/AUGUST 2024