Airport franchisee flying high in 2014, beyond

[caption id="attachment_20067" align="alignright" width="203" caption="Concessions International president Anthony Joseph"][/caption] Opening its first Washington, D.C., airport location just a week before Dulles International Airport became one of five in the United States to screen travelers returning from West Africa for Ebola could have been inauspicious timing for Concessions International. But the concessionaire’s president, Anthony Joseph, said the sensational headlines won’t have any bearing on the company’s guest traffic, which he expects to increase this year in concert with an uptick in business travel expected for 2014. Concessions International opened a franchised unit of Be Right Burger in Dulles in late September and will open an outlet of American Tap Room in Reagan National Airport this month. The Atlanta-based company operates 50 different locations in seven airports, comprising about 40 unique brands from the company’s own chef-driven restaurant concept to coffee shops and quick-service outlets, as well as franchised locations of Panda Express, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Fresh To Order or Seattle’s Best Coffee. While the Global Business Travel Association’s projection that the number of business trips will increase more than 2 percent in 2014, Joseph noted that a few airports will experience the majority of that benefit, making expansion in the space more competitive. “We’re seeing growth in air travel this year, and we’re very pleased with it,” Joseph said. “We’re bidding where the airports are busy, and we’re competing for locations in very attractive regions.” Joseph offered more insight in an interview with 1851 Magazine, discussing how trends in travel and the airport business itself is affecting Concessions International’s growth strategies. Would heightened concern over screening travelers for Ebola have any effect on the airport foodservice business? I don’t think we’re going to be particularly concerned about that. We’re in a highly secure environment to begin with. What we know from the news is that Ebola is not airborne, so we’re not worried about interacting with customers and serving guests. The guidelines are also being put in place in a limited number of airports. How important is this projected uptick in business travel? We’re opening six locations this winter in Washington, D.C., at Dulles and Reagan airports. Our strategy for new business is that we look for airports where the airlines are healthy and the economy is healthy. All those signs mean more opportunity for us. A big portion of our business is the business traveler. Leisure travel is important in the summer, but at all other times and especially during the week, it’s about business travel. It’s extremely important to our industry. Where is Concessions International looking to grow? Many airports today are not attractive, because the consolidation of airlines has meant fewer hub airports. Generally, hubs are the strongest places for us to grow, but you’ve seen many airports with less business because of the loss of airline routes. We’ll continue looking for more locations at airports that are winning market share, in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Denver and Chicago, in addition to New York and Washington. What’s the biggest challenge of operating so many brands? The biggest challenge is managing all the different relationships. If we operated 50 Burger Kings, that would be one system, but the 50 locations we operate can have different specs in purchasing, training or the certification of managers. That’s something we’re used to working through. It gets challenging with all these brands in different phases. If you have a five-year-old brand that maybe hasn’t matured, they might not have the right support systems developed. But we work with Einstein Bros. Bagels in Miami and DFW, and they’re very adept at nontraditional airport environments. They know how to do it, and working with their processes is more straightforward. Younger brands might not have worked with higher volumes and decreased storage before. Last year, Chicago announced higher environmental standards for foodservice operators in its airports. Is that trend toward green practices going to continue? It is. Airports are high-profile public venues, so there is an opportunity for airports to play a leading role, which is great. The challenge is that airports are looking to move toward all compostable products, and if you think about just packaging in quick service and how much you could reduce what goes into landfills, that’s a huge infrastructure change for us. But airports have the ability because of their heavy volume to adopt some of the greener standards, so we’re able to source better packaging when the airports create a market for it.