Ramstad: For the first time in five years, MSP is seeking new restaurants and shops

Next week, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will seek new restaurants and stores for the first time since before the pandemic.

And your opinions factor into those decisions. If you’ve ever provided MSP with feedback on wanting a different restaurant on a concourse, it’s been filed in their database.

“We review and read every single comment that comes from our passengers, and we categorize them,” said Isabella Rhawie, interim vice president for revenue development for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. “If we’re getting a lot of comments from people saying ‘I want a salad place,’ we’re going to get a salad place.”

The last wave of new shops and eateries opened in 2019, just before COVID-19 pandemic temporarily disrupted air travel. For small-business owners, the airport is one of the most lucrative and challenging business opportunities in the region.

The leases are for a fairly long time in retail life — 10 years, instead of three to five. With a consistent, predictable customer base, the revenue potential is around $2 million to $3 million a year.

On the other hand, work starts at 3 a.m. to be ready for passengers on the first bank of departing flights, which starts around 5:30. There are numerous complexities to master, from sending all employees through security at each shift to scheduling product deliveries through a single company to a required remodeling halfway through the lease.

“The airport in general is just such a different venue from any street-side location,” said Rhawie, who has been working at the airport for a decade and previously worked in leasing at the Mall of America. “It’s something that you have to plan ahead of time and understand the process. But we do our very best to outline that process as clearly as possible.”

MSP is offering eight spots in Terminal 2, the smaller terminal used by Sun Country, Southwest and a handful of other airlines. A multiyear makeover of Terminal 1 businesses begins in 2027, which will create dozens more opportunities for prospective operators.

For Terminal 2, airport officials are looking for four different businesses to operate three coffee shops, one bar, one full-service restaurant, one convenience store, a hamburger restaurant and, yes, a salad place.

Most will have to be national brands, which means an operator has to be in a business relationship with a larger company — or show they can get one.

Some of the new businesses will take the space of those ending a lease, and others will be part of an addition now under construction on the north end of Terminal 2.

Kerry Forbes, who has been operating Caribou Coffee shops at MSP since 1998, said business owners inside MSP focus not only on their own operations but on the broader goal of making the airport attractive.

“The traveling public doesn’t differentiate their experience from dropoff to takeoff. It’s all one experience. You really feel part of a larger community,” Forbes said.

Business operators join a council with airport, airline, Transportation Security Administration officials and others who meet monthly to assess the customer service experience they all provide. When I mentioned Rhawie’s database of passenger suggestions to Forbes, she replied, “I don’t think anything goes unnoticed and unnoted.”

Forbes operates four Caribou Coffee shops in Terminal 1 and two in Terminal 2. Both spaces in Terminal 2 are up for renewal, but the airport is reconfiguring how they are allocated. The coffee shop near baggage claim will be paired with two quick-service restaurants on the concourse. And two coffee shop spaces on the concourse will be put together.

“There are some units that have less foot traffic, for example, than others. So what we do is we pair those units with our higher grossing units, and we ensure that they get the same amount of investment and opportunity,” Rhawie said.

Forbes said she’ll form a strategy once the official request for proposals is released next week. The document will have rental minimums, but the process is designed for operators to compete with each other on how much they’ll pay to the airport.

The airport will require that five of the eight new businesses have collective bargaining agreements with workers. It exempted the hamburger and salad spots and one coffee shop, aiming to attract national brands that are popular but that forbid operators from entering into labor contracts.

There’s one other thing that prospective operators need to be up on: order kiosks and other self-service technology. “I just want to ensure that we’re using technology to keep the queue lines within the spaces and so that people can check out quickly,” Rhawie said.