Over the past 30 years, forms of street pricing became the norm at U.S. airports. Airports adopted these policies to supposedly assure passengers of “fair prices” at the airport – that the price at the airport is like off-airport prices. Whether the policies work for this purpose is a discussion for another day. Rather, for ARRA’s July Forum, we will examine an underlying premise of street pricing – that the businesses of airport concessionaires are comparable to their street side counterparts.
The premise is not true. Many aspects of an airport business are not like the comparable street side business: hours of operation, security, degree of unionization, logistics, and, of course, capital costs, to name just a few. We invite you to join our July Forum as we welcome Riley Lagesen, Shareholder and chair of Greenberg Traurig’s Global Restaurant Industry Group, and Richard Schneider, Chief Operating Officer of Areas USA. Riley and Rich will add their insights of street-side and airside restaurant and retail costs and operations to ARRA’s ongoing conversation to evolve a sustainable, resilient, and fair business framework for airport concessions. No doubt this will be an informative conversation. We hope you can join us.