Airport Experience® News - Conference 2023

BEFORE YOU TAKE OFF AUSTIN UPSTART Delaware North Partners With Teen Entrepreneur

BY SARAH BEL ING

retail strategy. “Austin has done an exceptional job of recreating a mini city inside of the airport,” says White. “We worked closely with the Me & the Bees team to tell their story in a way that was true to them and resonated with Austin locals. It’s about more than just complimenting a city’s eccentricities — it’s also about creating a culture and building relationships with a community of people.” It’s a culture of relationships that the brand regularly fosters with the Austin community. In addition to producing sustainably-minded lemonade, Ulmer and her parents started the Healthy Hive Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to bee conservation funded by portions of the brand’s sales. Ulmer has also partnered with Austin’s Whole Kids Foundation to fund bee hive installation in local schools. “When the opportunity came up to have such a robust presence at the Austin airport, we felt it important to mark this milestone by giving back to Austin in a meaningful way,” she said. White added that Delaware North believes supporting local, cause-minded brands like Me & the Bees Lemonade is the start of a larger airport trend. “We’re excited about future partnerships and bringing more local, small, women-owned and minority owned brands forward— it’s something that we’ll continue to do not only in Austin, but across the nation,” she added. “I think that this is critical to our success.”

ustin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) is abuzz with a brand-new beverage partnership

“Mikaila has such an incredible story, and it begins in Austin,” said Sunshine White, director of strategic partnerships for Delaware North. “Whether you’re a local or passing through our airport locations, we want you to experience a connection to the city you’re in. Mikaila has made such an impact - both as a woman-owned and a minority-owned business local to Austin - and that should be celebrated.” Ulmer says she is thrilled to be featured alongside the beloved local brands she grew up with like Annie’s Café & Bar, Earl Campbell’s, Salt Lick BBQ, Tacodeli, Book People, and East Side Pies, which Ulmer noted was the first restaurant to take her product from the lemonade stand to bottled sales. “Expanding into our hometown airport gives us the chance to proudly represent Austin and share our amazing entrepreneurial success story which our city has helped to foster,” Ulmer says. Creating an ecosystem of local businesses is key to family-owned Delaware North’s

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complete with a sweet hometown connection —Me& the Bees Lemonade, founded by the city’s ownMikaila Ulmer, is now available for purchase through the airport’s concessions provider, Delaware North. Featuring the brand’s signature flaxseed and honey-sweetened brews (a family recipe passed down from Ulmer’s great-grandmother), 12-ounce bottles of Me & the Bees Lemonade, company merchandise, and Ulmer’s debut memoir Bee Fearless: Dream Like A Kid are being sold alongside other local vendors at AUS. For the team at Delaware North, teaming up with an entrepreneurial superstar like Ulmer was an easy call. The teen CEO, who was stung by multiple bees as a small child, quickly overcame her fear to develop a sustainable, bee-friendly lemonade brand and successfully pitch her company on ABC’s Shark Tank at age 10.

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