Airport Experience® News - Conference Issue 2024

Finding The Right Concessions Mix Is An Ongoing Journey

BY SALLY KRAL

When Pat Murray, deputy CEO of SSP America , began working in the airport industry 18 years ago, concessions programs were in the middle of a transition from large, generic, cafeteria-like programs to more nationally recognizable quick-service brands. “That was just what the airport system could manage or handle at the time, and the natural outgrowth of that was airports began to look like the food court in a large mall,” he says. “What ended up happening was an airport in the Midwest, on the West Coast and in the Southeast all had the same food offerings.” Just as malls have changed dramatically since then, so have airports, with the pendulum swinging from national-brand to hyper-local focus about a decade ago, and back a bit more recently to somewhere closer

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AX NEWS MARCH 2024