Special Coverage: 2022 AX Conference
In one way or another, all of the emerging businesses that presented their concepts at this year’s Business Pitch Showcase at the Airport Experience Conference offered different approaches to wellness, including both physical health and mental wellbeing.
The presenters included Nap Bar, Sawatch Wellness, Atmosphere TV, and Oat Couture Oatmeal Café & Montgomery Scotch Lounge. Airport Experience News senior writer Andrew Tellijohn served as the session’s host and the panel of experts who were tasked with providing their feedback on the presenters’ viability in the airport environment included Rebekah Bray, senior property manager at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC); Regina Brown, senior director of business development at Stellar Partners; Isabella Rhawie, assistant director of concessions and business development at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP); and Carla Wytmar, vice president of development at High Flying Foods.
Nap Bar
Khaliah O. Guillory, CEO and founder of Nap Bar, kicked off the session with a look at her company’s innovative approach to rest. “The traveler’s experience is your competitive advantage and Nap Bar is the vessel that will help your travelers who are exhausted recharge,” she began. She also noted the benefits of Nap Bar—which offers white-glove rest sanctuaries for napping, meditation, yoga, and general mindfulness—for employees who may be overworked and sleep-deprived, which affects their productivity and their interactions with customers. Guillory noted that Nap Bar is backed by science and engages all the senses by providing such things as pillow mists, mood lighting, healthy juice shots, and virtual reality therapy experiences. She addressed the fact that there are similar concepts out there right now but that Nap Bar is different in that it is a luxury brand that tackles innovation as well as experiences.
The judges were impressed by the concept and asked a few follow-up questions about risk, space and labor requirements, and pricing. Guillory noted that she believes the biggest risk is “reengineering our culture” to value rest as much as we value productivity. Nap Bars can range from 300 to 1,000 square feet with one part-time and two full-time employees, and the pricing is $2 per minute for an hour up to overnight.
Sawatch Wellness
Next to present were Kevin and Ryan Bush, brothers and business partners who found a shared personal belief in the benefits of CBD—Kevin for physical injuries, and Ryan for mental health treatment. Their business Sawatch Wellness offers kiosk machines that dispense premium CBD products ranging from $10 to $90, including gummies, tinctures, oils, lotions and lip balms. Kevin and Ryan identified two areas of opportunity in the growing CBD market: convenience and education. Their kiosks aim to fill these gaps by being easy to place in many locations, offering immediacy of product, and featuring information to destigmatize CBD and differentiate it from THC. Each WiFi-equipped kiosk features an interactive touchscreen, age verification scanner, credit card and Apple Pay readers, and a stock cabinet that can hold roughly 188 products. “We’re expecting explosive growth of close to 100 percent in the CBD market over the next few years—as we approach 2025 we’re looking at $7 billion in expected U.S. retail,” Ryan said. “The nice thing too is that there’s not a big dog player in CBD—it’s very disparate, very broken up, so there’s a lot of opportunity to find beachheads in a pretty new market right now.” He added that highly educated and high earning Millennial and Gen Z consumers are the driving force behind that growth.
The judges appreciated that CBD is indeed a growing market but raised concerns about FAA regulations concerning the sale of the products in the airport space. Ryan stressed that everything in the Sawatch Wellness kiosks is federally legal in accordance with The Farm Bill of 2018. There were also concerns over security and the products getting into the wrong hands. Ryan addressed this by pointing out that transactions are monitored in the software every six minutes, which can help potentially catch any misuse.
Atmosphere TV
Mike Kelly, director of partnerships for Atmosphere TV, came to the stage next to discuss the world’s first streaming TV service for businesses. He started by pointing out how “controversial, often polarizing and frankly boring” traditional cable news channels can be. “Subtitled TV provides no value to you and your passengers and TV for business is and continues to be a broken concept,” he said. “We’re here to fix that.” Atmosphere TV offers short form, audio-free and easily digestible entertainment for customer viewing. Kelly asserted that when Atmosphere TVs are placed in bars and restaurants, its content is proven to keep customers sitting 16 percent longer in their bar stools, which often equates to more sales. They also give the operator access to their digital signage platform. “What this does is allows you to drop your own specials, features, events, limited-time offers and promotions, and public service announcements directly onto our screens, right in between the content,” Kelly said. “We capture their eyes and you feed them the messaging.”
Atmosphere TVs are also completely free to operators—to this the judges wanted to know “what’s the catch?” Kelly explained that the company is ad-driven, it sells commercials just like cable companies do, though they are open to revenue share options or other opportunities that may be unique to the airport space.
Oat Couture Oatmeal Café & Montgomery Scotch Lounge
The final business presented, Oat Couture Oatmeal Café & Montgomery Scotch Lounge, is a healthy, fast-casual breakfast and lunch spot by day and a scotch whisky lounge by night. Founder Brian Montgomery pointed out that there doesn’t seem to exist a brand offering quick, healthy, elevated and unique breakfast and lunch items, and this is where Oat Couture hopes to fill a need. He pointed out that oatmeal is already popular and mass-adopted, with 23 percent of Americans saying they eat Quaker Oats oatmeal at least once a week; it’s a superfood with fantastic health benefits; and it’s also fashionable and on trend right now. In addition to oatmeal with unique sweet and savory stir-ins and toppings, the venue serves breakfast sandwiches, paninis, baked goods, and coffee. The average ticket price is $16 and food costs are 20 percent. There are currently two locations in Canada with lots of opportunity to grow. “We’ve thrived during the pandemic—and this is in Canada, which has had five lockdowns,” COO Tristen Burgoyne said. “Our quarterly sales over the pandemic are on average 45 percent higher than our pre-pandemic quarterly average.” In 2021 the company’s sales per square foot were $805, whereas similar fast-casual brands typically make $500-$600 per square foot. Labor costs are 10 to 20 percent for front-of-house staff and equipment and smallwares costs $30,000.
The oatmeal covers breakfast and lunch, and then in the evening the venue flips in a matter of minutes into Montgomery Scotch Lounge, which requires $15,000 more in equipment, décor and inventory. “Our goal is to have anybody find their own true scotch—we want to make scotch approachable, Montgomery said. “It hasn’t been marketed well, so people don’t adopt scotch easily, but we’re here to change that.” The menu features phonetic spelling and playful flavor descriptors to take some of the snobbery out of scotch. Flights range from $30 to $150 with a 350 percent markup, accompanied by cocktails, wine and beer, and small plates, and the average ticket price is $50.
The judges were intrigued by the business, but were concerned about brand confusion with the flipped concept and also the time it takes to switch over. The other concern was that scotch doesn’t have as large a consumer base as other spirits. Montgomery stressed the short time it takes to flip concepts and that the venue doesn’t close entirely while the change happens. And as for the latter concern, “There are certain markets that just aren’t going to get it maybe at first, but I think the destination scotch drinker will find it, and the person looking for a unique airport experience will find it too,” he said.
