Hurricane Sandy and the accompanying nor’easter that hit the major metropolitan areas in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia wreaked havoc on air travel in late October, but concessionaires say careful planning spared them from any major supply or service issues.
All airports were up and running within a day or two of the storm, and due to advance cancellations by airlines, there weren’t terminals filled with stranded passengers, as has been the case in the past. And while some product deliveries were disrupted, concessionaires had contingency plans in place.
“As a matter of procedure, Hudson maintains sufficient quantities of merchandise in warehouses at or near our airports and rail terminals,” says Hope Remoundos, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Hudson Group. “We carry ample inventory levels to address emergency situations.”
Remoundos says there were some minor disruptions in deliveries from one of Hudson’s primary wholesale distributors due to power outages, but the glitch was not enough to cause shortages of any product at the store level. And Hudson Group’s shopping bag supplier, Forem Bag, took extraordinary measures to keep the retailer supplied.
“Our shopping bag supplier flew in product to deliver to us since the Port of Elizabeth was closed,” Remoundos says. “The containers carrying our bags were either flooded or literally floated away but we had no supply disruption. It’s truly amazing considering the damage that was created by this storm.”
For OTG management, everything was “pretty normal during the storm” because of advance preparation,” says Rick Blatstein, CEO.
“When we saw Hurricane Sandy coming, we worked directly on coordinating with our business partners to have refrigerated trucks and supplies at all our locations,” Blatstein says. “Fortunately with our business partners we were very well prepared for anything that was going to come our way.”
OTG was also able to feed thousands of New Yorkers that were heavily impacted by the storm, Blatstein says.
The Paradies Shops didn’t experience any disruptions, according to Lou Bottino, chief operating officer.
“There’s one main reason,” he says. “We’ve been through this drill before in Florida and in the Northeast, with snow and with hurricanes. Our vendors are very good at anticipating things.”
While parts of New York and New Jersey are devastated – and that includes some distributors operating in the region – the three concessionaires say that not only was the storm weathered with few if any disruptions, there are also no ongoing problems with supply.
