A new player in the PGA

Brothers Tom and Bill Given were perched on a golf cart near the final hole at Torrey Pines in San Diego a few weeks ago as Tiger Woods hobbled up to the green on the way to winning the U.S. Open despite a torn knee ligament and two stress fractures in his left leg.

"It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen," Tom said. "Just incredible," Bill agreed.

And the best part was, they were getting paid exceedingly well for the memory.

The Givens are the owners and chief executive brain trust of Prom Management Group Inc., an Oakdale company they have built into the largest tournament caterer and concessionaire in professional golf.

So this week they're patrolling the 3M Championship, the senior PGA event underway at the Tournament Players course in Blaine, keeping track of six concession locations and the elaborate buffets they're catering at 22 VIP hospitality tents run by corporate sponsors.

In this fashion, Prom Management generated 85 percent of its $30 million in 2007 sales at 34 tournaments run by the PGA (Professional Golf Association) Tour, the PGA's senior Championship Tour, the U.S. Golf Association and the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association). The rest came from local catering, both inside and outside its spacious banquet facility in Oakdale.

The non-golf catering generated a creditable $4.5 million in 2007, mind you. But given a gross of about $1.8 million 16 years ago, before professional golf became the company's principal meal ticket, it's apparent where the growth is centered.

"And a lot of that growth in local catering came from price increases," Bill Given said. "So you can see where we'd be without the golf."

Colorful history

The Prom name might sound familiar to some of you fellow geezers who remember the Prom Center, the dine-and-dance hall on University Avenue in St. Paul where we used to shake a leg to live bands back when shaking a leg didn't hurt quite so much.

Passage of the Big Band era forced the company, which the Givens' father, Harry, started in 1952, to rely on the modestly growing catering and banquet business -- with one important addition.

Thanks to the elder Given's focus on community affairs, the St. Paul Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1957 hired him to provide gallery concessions for the St. Paul Open tournament it was sponsoring at Keller Golf Course in St. Paul. That was the company's introduction to the professional golf market, which endured as a small but constant piece of the business for years.

That led to contracts at a number of LPGA and senior PGA events in the Twin Cities, plus such majors as the U.S. Open in 1970 and 1991 at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska.

Those contracts covered only concessions, however; the more lucrative business of catering to corporate VIP venues eluded the Givens for 36 years.

Not that some of those concession contracts weren't welcome. The 1991 U.S. Open, for example, generated $800,000, or 35 percent of the year's $2.3 million in sales. In fact, that windfall is what shifted the focus to professional golf as the company's growth engine.

The 1991 Open was important for another reason: The man in charge was Hollis Cavner, a veteran manager of professional golf tournaments who was to help loft Prom Management into the big time of professional golf.

Two years later, Cavner was managing the Burnet Senior Golf Classic (forerunner of the 3M Championship) at the Bunker Hills course in Blaine and offered the Givens a three-year contract for both gallery concessions and corporate catering at the tournament. Why?

"They're the most effective and cooperative vendors I've ever worked with," said Cavner, CEO of the Blaine-based event-management firm Pro Links Sports. "They're working outside and dealing with unexpected problems such as rain and wind and even flooded parking lots. And they're grinning and saying, 'What can we do to help?'"

It doesn't hurt that the quality of their food service is "some of the best you've ever tasted," Cavner added.

The big break

The big break came in 1996, when Cavner was managing the U.S. Senior Championship in Cleveland and hired the Givens to handle both corporate catering and concessions.

"That was our first national exposure, and it gave us the credibility to start leveraging for more golf business," Tom Given said. Nonetheless, while golf sales grew, it was three years before they landed their first out-of-state contract on the prestigious PGA Tour, the 1999 Buick Classic in Rye, N.Y.

After which the Givens did something rarely done at the time: "We went out and started knocking on doors," Tom Given said. "The competition was taking the business for granted, and we weren't."

What was the pitch? "We offered a high-quality menu with more variety, rather than a glorified concession product like some did," Bill Given said.

The upshot: Thanks to their perseverance, Prom Management had a bonanza year in 2007, when eight tournaments were added, seven of them on the elite PGA Tour, and sales jumped 67 percent from $18 million in 2006.

"It was five to 10 years of sales effort starting to pay off," Bill Given said.

Since the growth in tournament numbers is unlikely to be matched in 2008 -- the Givens expect to serve 36 tournaments this year -- they are projecting a modest 10 percent sales growth, to about $33 million.

So what are they planning for an encore?

Well, there are acquisitions available similar to the Ohio caterer they bought in 2004 to add 10 tournaments and $6 million in sales to the business. And they're looking at auto racing as a logical target.

Then there's the professional tennis circuit, which the Givens have added to their client list with contracts at the RCA Men's Tennis Championship in Indiana the past two years.

"But we're approaching it all cautiously," Tom Given said. "The commissions charged [by some venues] can eat up profits pretty quickly. And there are venues where food quality is not a very high priority."

Which the Givens do not regard as a comfortable fit.

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com