Airport Experience® News - Conference Issue 2025

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MURRAY TAKES THE HELM Longtime Industry Veteran Pat Murray Charts The Path For SSP America

BY CAROL WARD

ditor’s Note: On January 9, SSP Group announced the appointment of Pat Murray as the new CEO of SSP America , with immediate effect. Murray replaced Michael Svagdis, who is now CEO, Campus & Government Services for Sodexo. Murray served as deputy CEO prior to his appointment to the helm, a position he took on in 2022. He joined SSP America in 2007 as vice president of business development. Murray says “the honor and the opportunity to get to be the CEO is a massive responsibility, but one I welcome and completely appreciate.” AXN’s Carol Ward spoke with Murray in mid-February to get his take on the current state of the industry and his vision for driving SSP America forward. E

WARD: Can you share your overall vision for SSP America as you take on this new mantle? MURRAY: I think that the business channel is in as much a state of flux as it’s ever been, at least since I’ve been in it. We have pressure and headwinds from all directions that I’m not sure we would have ever anticipated. Meanwhile, we have grown a company that today touches on 10,000 North American employees, and sometime this summer we’ll open in our 59th airport. Certainly, we have to focus on the culture of our business and what we do for others. Notably, we’re a restaurant company so we have to focus on what’s important in the food service world, which really comes down to high quality food recipes. We are a localized branded business. We focus on bringing restaurants to communities that reflect the taste of place. I think those things will remain completely unchanged. I’ve spent a lot of my career in aviation on what some would term the sales side of the business, and that involves construction of restaurants, planning, working with brands etcetera. But most of my actual life was based in the operating side of the business. [The CEO role] affords me a greater

opportunity to be involved in the day-to day operations and to strive for what [we envisioned] 18 years ago when we started the company. It’s a very meaningful thing to me personally. WARD: Tell me a bit about your background and the launch of SSP America. MURRAY: We started the company in 2007 and into early 2008. Back then we were called Creative Host [Services]. We switched over to SSP America and took on the Food Travel Experts email address and charted out our path to try to live up to that moniker. Les Capetta was hired by SSP Group in England. At the time, the business here was very small, a collection of, you know, different businesses and generally small airports. I had worked for Les at HMSHost. He [approached me with this opportunity]. I don’t think he or I actually knew what we were going to do. There was a part of me that thought we were going to go off and develop a company that was really focused on smaller airports and not try to battle the bear, if you will. But a few months into it, the Houston opportunity came around to us and we started to launch into larger airports. Toronto came right after that, and JFK.

Above: Pat Murray is the new CEO of SSP America

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AX NEWS MARCH 2025