Airport Experience® News - Customer Service Issue 2024

Founded by Catholic pastor Greg Boyle in 1988, Homeboy Industries offers advocacy, career training and employment to previously incarcerated and formerly gang involved individuals. Maral Matossian, vice president of LAX for URW Airports, says that in choosing to partner with Homeboy, they were “inspired by LAWA’s commitment to enhancing the LAX guest experience with local, socially responsible businesses that reflect the diversity and spirit of Los Angeles.” “Homeboy Industries, with its long standing reputation for transforming lives through job training and social enterprise, was a natural fit, able to offer guests a unique, locally inspired culinary experience while supporting a powerful social mission,” Matossian adds. By contributing a percentage of its profits to Homeboy, Areas USA has sent more than $1.5M to the not-for-profit in their decade long partnership, says Richard Schneider,

chief development officer. While many of Homeboy Industries’ clients are barred from airport employment due to FAA regulations prohibiting employees with felony convictions, the store’s brand training emphasizes the need to represent Homeboy’s mission, says Schneider. “Concept managers who act as our ‘brand ambassadors’ visit the downtown L.A. Homeboy Industry complex and participate in Father Boyle’s inspiring morning message and share a fellowship breakfast at Homegirl Café,” Schneider says. “Our team ensures each new hire for our Homeboy Café understands the impact Homeboy Industries makes in the community and beyond, and how they are changing people’s lives every day.” “We often say ‘Homeboy Industries belongs to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles belongs to Homeboy Industries,’” adds Homeboy Industries CEO Thomas Vozzo. “Our partnership with Areas showcasing Homeboy

Industries provides LAX with an important piece of the Los Angeles community, and a lens into this 36-year-old non-profit organization that is now a central part of the city’s culture and identity. This identity is anchored by spirit and the philosophy that, ‘there is no us and them, only us,’” he adds. “The hope is that everyone who visits the Homeboy Café at LAX is able to take away a piece of this culture and take it with them, wherever they may travel or call home.” Inspired To Act Inspired by the Homeboy Café concept, other community-forward concessions have since taken wing. When Ken Buchanan, executive vice president of revenue management at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) discussed the idea of launching a socially-driven concept with concessionaire Gideon Toal Management Services (GTMS), he said

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AX NEWS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024