Airport Experience® News - Conference Issue 2026

Left, Below, Opposite page: Zachrisson was instrumental in developing an RFP for SAN’s new T1 that took into account the damage done to concessionaires by the pandemic. High Flying Foods, Areas USA, Emerging Domestic Market Ventures, McDonald’s, Marshall Retail Group and Paradies Lagardère were all awarded contracts.

back and ask for a change order to the project because a lot of things had not been thought of. If you want to have four quick-serve restaurants, you have to have utilities for that, and we didn’t have it. There was a lot to catch up on.” In addition, because SAN hadn’t done any major development in over ten years, the request for proposals template they were using was out of date. “But the real shocker, of course, was that we didn’t have anything to RFP anyway,” she says. “We really didn’t have the mechanisms to be able to put anything out yet. Here we were looking for operators to invest millions of dollars into this new facility, and we just didn’t even have the fundamental tools to be able to attract that investment.” Especially considering how badly concessionaires were hurting at the time, Zachrisson knew SAN had to go about this RFP process very thoughtfully. “We were working to develop a program that concessionaires were going to be able to bid on given the constraints on their investment capital and at a time when everybody was very, very conservative,” she explains. “It was a scary time. I didn’t have the luxury of failing, of putting out an RFP that nobody bid on. I had to know that the offer I was putting out on the street penciled for these companies, that

it was a viable opportunity. And so that 2022 timeframe was a lot of listening and learning to really understand how this gut punch to the industry manifest itself in what I was trying to do.” Zachrisson’s assertive and hands-on approach to the project turned out to be just what was needed. “I didn’t really realize exactly how much I was pushing the envelope at the time, but I knew that it needed to be pushed in order for us to succeed,” she says. “And there was a lot riding on it, it was a very high-risk endeavor, with a high risk of failure. I didn’t see much of San Diego that first year at all, I was just working the entire time.” Zachrisson and her team got the RFP out in January 2023, with concessions contracts awarded that summer. On the food and beverage side, High Flying Foods was awarded 12 locations in the new terminal; Areas USA was awarded five; Emerging Domestic Market Ventures , which is owned by ACDBE restaurateur Gonzalo de la Melena, was awarded one; and McDonald’s was awarded one, to be operated by ACDBE franchisees Lisa DeBono and Jenny Briones of Dejon Enterprises. On the retail side, Marshall Retail Group won four locations and Paradies Lagardère won three.

And in September 2025, phase one of the new Terminal 1 – which Zachrisson says comprises roughly 80% of the project – officially opened. “It’s turned out to be a huge success,” Zachrisson says. “The passenger has gravitated to it in a way that we could have only hoped they would’ve gravitated to it. It’s been fantastic.”

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AX NEWS MARCH 2026