Editor’s Note: Airport Experience News has launched the ACDBE of Distinction award to honor small, Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprises-certified firms that excel in their field. Katherine Lam, president and CEO of Bambuza Hospitality Group, is one of six winners for 2024.
Katherine Lam and Daniel Nguyen almost walked out of the first airport outreach event they attended. Lam, the president and CEO of Bambuza Hospitality Group, and Nguyen, chief operating officer, were responding to efforts by Portland International Airport (PDX) to attract local businesses.
According to Lam, the Port of Portland delivered some informational materials to their restaurant in 2013. The company itself was launched in 2003 and Bambuza Vietnamese Kitchen & Bar was a local favorite. A decade into building their business on the street, The Port asked them to attend an informational outreach meeting at PDX.
It was intimidating. “We almost walked out because there was a room filled with a couple of hundred people, in groups and teams, and all in suits,” Lam recalls. “We were just in our working clothes.”
But the friendliness and openness of the PDX concessions team won them over. “At the time Daniel had just completed his MBA. I was about to do the last year of my MBA, and we treated the RFP as my capstone project,” she says. The two wrote and submitted the RFP; a short time later they were informed that they had won. Bambuza’s first airport location – a quickserve concept – opened in March of 2015. From the start it did not disappoint.
“When we did the airport tour [before responding to the RFP], the concessions team pointed out how different locations were performing,” Lam recalls. “Daniel and I just looked at each other, [thinking] that’s five-year’s revenue in just one year. But from day one, the numbers didn’t lie.”
The Learning Curve
While the PDX concessions team was accessible and helpful, Lam says the early days involved a considerable amount of observation and learning. She and Nguyen didn’t know anyone who operated airport concessions. “We didn’t have anyone to ask, and we didn’t have a team – it was just Daniel and me,” Lam says. “I remember, the minute we got the signed contract, we jumped right in with the construction team and the design team on a weekly basis. Then we got our badges.
“The badges [allowed us] to get behind security and learn,” she continues. “We just walked the concourse at various times and made notes of what was going on, what people were buying, who was traveling…” Lam says they paid attention to details, noting what products people were touching, looking at, carrying and sitting with. They’d show up at 4 a.m. and stay until midnight. “It was our investment, we wanted to make sure [we did it right],” she says. “The early days were challenging but also an opportunity for us to learn.” Once Bambuza opened and began to grow its footprint in airports, Lam began to reassess certain practices that may have worked on the street but were arduous in airports.
