Areas USA - Revitalising the travel hospitality experience by putting excellence first

Revitalising the travel hospitality experience by putting excellence first

PROJECT PARTNER

Revitalising the travel hospitality experience by putting excellence first

Clint Westbrook, Chief Operating Officer, Steve Byrne, Vice President of Concepts and Standards, and Paula Lopez, Director of Purchasing at Areas USA open up about the company’s core values and holistic approach to transformation.

Urth Caffe & Bar is located in Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International and features fresh, healthy foods by sourcing local, sustainable and organic ingredients.

Its subsidiary, Areas USA, operates over 140 restaurants and retail stores in ten major airports and 13 travel plazas in three states.

The company’s US locations in major international airports include Houston Hobby, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Miami, Chicago O’Hare, Newark Liberty, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Orlando, Detroit and Indianapolis. Areas USA also operates travel plazas along the central highways in Florida, Maryland and West Virginia.

Areas USA champions the group’s belief that travel is more than just a destination and travellers have diverse motivations and expectations for their journeys. The company specialises in understanding these needs and adapting services and culinary

Every year, Areas Worldwide welcomes 348 million customers to its 1,900 restaurants and points of sale in 10 countries around the world.

The Spot, set to open in late December at Houston Hobby Airport, is an island-casual spot that features mouth-watering burgers, fresh seafood and hand-spun shakes.

Yard House, set to open at Houston Hobby’s Central Concourse late next year, will feature the best qualities of this national sports bar favorite: rotating taps of imported, craft and specialty ales along with great food and classic rock music.

offerings so their guests have memorable experiences when they travel.

Here to talk about the supply chain optimisation, sustainability strategy and cultural transformation underway at Areas USA are Clint Westbrook, Chief Operating Officer, Steve Byrne, Vice President of Concepts and Standards, and Paula Lopez, Director of Purchasing.

Clint begins by describing the company’s culture and core values that guide its direction as a business.

“Areas USA is driven by four pillars, what we call the Areas spirit,” begins Clint. “The four pillars are excellence, belonging, responsibility and collaboration. We channel the Areas spirit to our team members, our partners, our guests, the people who encounter our company and, more broadly, the planet.”

As Paula explains, excellence is the overarching component of these values and the company culture.

“All of our core values are focused on excellence,” adds Paula. “Excellence in how our teams operate, excellence in our

partnerships and excellence for our guests. We make sure that everything we do brings the best out of each team, not only internally but also our landlords. We want anyone that is going into our stores, brand outlets or encountering our company to experience this excellence as well – it is paramount to our company culture.”

“It's a spirit of trying, as a company, to make the people who are working in the field much better within themselves and so we get the best out of them,” adds Steve. “The goal that we've instilled

over the past year is to exceed expectations: first, of the guest, second, of each other, third, of our partners out there at the airports and motorways and of the people in the field. Here at our central Support Centre, we want all the people involved in our operations to see us as their ultimate support system so they can happily go on with their day and deal with their staff and their guests and not worry about the factors we can handle for them.”

Clint joined Areas USA in March 2023 and in his first week had the privilege of meeting Oscar Vela, CEO of Areas Worldwide and other top-level directors.

“The most fascinating takeaway I had from that early meeting was hearing Oscar talk about Areas as nimble and humble,” recalls Clint. “We never want to start a conversation with our clients or

“Supply chain optimisation is a major component in Areas USA’s endeavours to manifest excellence in its complex and expansive operations”

partners with the word ‘no’ – we will always look at possibilities. It defines how we achieve our goals and engage with people to get things done. Excellence is the key term in our vernacular because it’s what we strive for, nimbly and humbly, in every way.”

Supply chain optimisation is a major component in Areas USA’s endeavours to manifest excellence in its complex and expansive operations.

“We have a complicated supply chain since we are not a company with just one brand which is easy to execute across the country,” explains Paula. “At Areas USA, we have over 150 different locations. We have multiple vendors, national brands, local brands and our own brand – our supply chain tends to be more complicated than a typical supply chain. So optimising our supply chain is always our priority. How we do this falls into seven categories.

“Closely related to this are the second and third components, where we are investing in technology and tech integration. These optimisations are helping us send data insights directly to our vendors, making sure invoices are electronic and performing supportive tasks so the people out in the field can focus more on what they need to be doing, like serving our guests, rather than focusing on the administrative side.

“First of all, we are a data-driven organisation. We look at the data we analyse, ensuring that everything we're doing has a cause and effect. This helps us to make decisions quickly and effectively. We are very lean and agile.

“Our technology development in the past two years has helped us with the fourth and fifth components of our supply chain optimisation: category management and inventory management. Optimising our category management involves making sure that we have the right products, that we are profitable and that we have what the guest is expecting us to have in our assortment. Inventory management entails working with our operations team to ensure outlets have the right inventory on hand and we are not keeping money on the shelves. What we have developed is a highly effective rotation system by working with the distributors, so we have the correct deliveries, right when we need them.

“Belonging is having everyone feel like they're part of the Areas family. That's the culture that we promote within the organisation: one Areas”

Clint Westbrook, Chief Operating Officer

“Tying into this is the sixth aspect of our supply chain optimisation, which focuses on having great relationships with our partner vendors. We are constantly looking at how we can improve our company performance as a whole, but part of this is working with reliable partners that are aligned with our strategies as well.”

Steve elaborates on the final component of supply chain optimisation at Areas USA: sustainability. He emphasises that supply chain optimisation has sustainable components focused on the company’s ESG credentials at a strategic level – but sustainable optimisation is tangible, measurable and realistic at Areas USA too.

“Areas is the third largest provider of travel meals in the world and this means we have a duty to be responsible,” says Steve. “We are doing everything that we can, with an emphasis on realistic strategies, to preserve some of the best things that the Earth gives to us. Water is one of those precious resources. We have developed an advanced water flow system for our motorway rest areas. The amount of water flowing through those sites in a

24-hour period is staggering. But we've built an innovative water flow system that's been engineered specifically for our outlets. In the system’s first year of being operational, we will have used 1.6 million gallons of water less than we did in the previous year.

“Every year, we do a Worldwide Challenge and our valued partner Danone is crucial in helping us roll it out. We challenge our operators to bring incremental sales increases through innovative and sustainable optimisation projects. Whichever airport or travel plaza optimises the most incremental revenue gains is sent to Barcelona to receive a prize.

“Food is also a precious resource. We have a new system we brought in called ‘Crunch Time.’ It involves

“Every year, we do a Worldwide Challenge and our valued partner Danone is crucial in helping us roll it out. We challenge our operators to bring incremental sales increases through innovative and sustainable optimisation projects”

“Areas is the third largest provider of travel meals in the world and this means we have a duty to be responsible”

Steve Byrne, Vice President of Concepts

detailing exactly what we have to prepare, in terms of food needed for the day, according to what the sales are going to be. This means we haven't got staff prepping food all day for us, only to throw it away the next day. That waste has happened for generations in this business.

“To complement the Crunch Time system, we've actually removed all the rubbish bins out of our kitchens. Instead, we use a 10-gallon see-through container where employees can see everything that’s been thrown away, and they can see it all day. This has fostered a sense of responsibility within the workforce. It's dropped our costs by two-tenths of a per cent. That doesn't sound like a lot but multiplied out across the number of sales we do, it's an awful lot of money. The offshoot is we're not buying anywhere near as many plastic garbage bags now either.

“Another major sustainability incentive we’re rolling out that touches every part of the business is a project called ‘Operational Excellence,’ where we are concentrating on the very basics of what our company stands for. So far, it’s helped us reduce our food waste even further and consider our labour performance by

exploring how we can best place people in places or roles that are comfortable for them, to best bring out their potential.”

Areas USA’s focus on its people and workforce extends beyond the Operational Excellence project, and the company is embarking on holistic culture transformation to promote diversity, equality and inclusion.

“As we think about the pillar of people and team members, a very large focus for us is a sense of belonging that really does cross over all of those areas of diversity, equality, inclusion,” says Clint. “Belonging is having everyone feel like they're part of the Areas family. That's the culture that we promote within the organisation: one Areas. It doesn't matter which country you work in. It doesn't matter where you come from. We have an incredible record for the number and percentages of the population that we represent. A total of 68 per cent of Areas’ employees are from diverse and inclusive groups of people. Almost 60 per cent of our leadership team are women. We feel very strongly about opportunities. We feel very strongly about the chance for our family to grow internally. We champion the idea of ‘promote from within’: 75

to 80 per cent of our promotions come from within the Areas family. That leaves us a healthy 20 per cent where we can attract talent to come to the organisation, to be part of that family, and bring new ideas and new thoughts with them.

“We really focus hard on the whole person, because it's not just about work. Work is important but it must exist alongside the priorities of the health and wellbeing of each individual. We encourage

people to make sure they have a good balance, that they have the opportunity to improve themselves and grow with the organisation. This then allows them to also be present for their family, their friends and their community, and to be able to give back because they're healthy, they have that wealth and they have the opportunity for career growth as well.

“In years gone by, it was often work first and everything else came

Hi-Lo Diner is located in Terminal 1 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International, offering a true diner-style experience with traditional classics and modern eats.

second. And in a lot of cases – a distant second. But we like to think about the people that work for us as being able to work so they can live, versus living to work. We're really excited about how that pans out at Areas and it’s a source of great pride.”

Clint elaborates how the company’s excellent work in promoting diversity, equality and inclusion exists within a broader cultural transformation at Areas

“All the way from Barcelona to Miami and beyond, the focus has been around how we redefine experiences in line with the four pillars of excellence, belonging, responsibility and collaboration,” explains Clint.

“When we compare pre- to postpandemic circumstances, there is never going to be a larger cultural

– catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

shift we will see. Whether this is the culture of work or family, we believe making them inclusive is the number one priority. Number two, we want to give everyone the opportunity to work in the environment that best suits them – whether it be here in the Support Centre, for our remote workers or the people on the ground in our outlets. We are geographically spread out, so it makes sense for us to be able to encourage and also support people working in other parts of the US or around the world, yet still be connected to what we're doing.

“Since we became a private organisation, we're able to make those decisions quicker in a nimble and humble way so we can recognise what's important for the people that work for us and be sensitive to their needs.”

Looking ahead to the future, Areas USA has ambitious goals to double its revenue as a company in the next three to four years. Steve reiterates how achieving this goal depends on doing things differently and innovatively while pursuing growth.

hopefully going to be coming into play in the next 12 months, that’s ventless – there’s no gas or fumes,” shares Steve. “It will create a great workplace for the staff and a terrific experience for our guests. But it's also wonderful for our clients at the airports or travel plazas because they're not having to restructure their buildings.

“We opened two new restaurants in Houston recently with menus that exceed your typical airport expectations. When you visit an airport, nine times out of 10 there’ll be regular breakfasts with bacon and eggs, and you might have a hamburger at lunchtime. We're trying to break that mould. So in Houston, on our dinner menu, we're serving dishes involving more exotic ingredients from mussels to shishito peppers –we’re trying to wow people and exceed expectations for clients and customers. We believe breaking the mould and exceeding expectations in the process will help us grow, gain more business, attract new customers and bring back existing ones.”

“One example is we have a design for a restaurant, that's

Paula adds that interdepartmental collaboration to increase sales in specific locations, in a healthy way, is crucial to the growth strategy at Areas USA.

“Increasing sales is important, but it has to be in a healthy, profitable way”

Paula Lopez, Director of Purchasing

“Increasing sales is important, but it has to be in a healthy, profitable way,” says Paula.

“This stems from our category management with current partners, but also arises from the work done by our purchasing department: making sure we’re finding ways to potentiate new items, exploring new ideas in collaboration with the other departments, but also ensuring

Added Value

Reading, relaxing and the Red Devils

Steve loves reading autobiographies and non-fiction books and highly recommends Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara.

“Unreasonable Hospitality is absolutely eye-opening and thought-provoking,” says Steve.

“I love to read on the porch on a Sunday afternoon, spend time with my family and go fishing –that keeps me out of trouble for a couple of hours. I’m also a mad Manchester United supporter and follow them religiously.”

we achieve good profitability with those items.”

Clint emphasises the importance of focusing on local sourcing and cuisine when pursuing expansion and growth.

“We love expanding into new areas, but first and foremost we focus on the local aspect of that region of the country,” says Clint.

Motherhood and leadership

Unlike Steve, Paula prefers to read fiction as a means of taking her mind off the demands of daily life. But she also finds tremendous value in exploring the overlap between being a mother and being a leader.

“Something I’ve been focused on lately is how do I lead my team, from a female perspective and from a mother’s perspective,” shares Paula. “There are a lot of analogies between me being a mother and having a team. As a mother, you’re constantly asking yourself how to be better for your children and make them happy. The same applies to my team: how do I improve as a leader and make sure they are happy?”

“What are the local chefs doing? What are the local restaurants doing? Asking these questions means we can bring that representation into our airports and our plazas. From there, there’s a ripple effect, from that local outlet to the region, that travellers like to see.

“Our business development team has more than tripled in size in

the past year, so we can put the right people in place and drive opportunities. We have no cookie-cutter plan for growth, we customise and localise it to be more effective but also respectful to the regions we serve.”

For further information and to learn more about Areas USA, visit us.areas.com.

Paula recognises she is very target-driven, which not only manifests at work but also in her new running hobby. She is training for a half marathon and finds the progress, structure and goals very motivating.

“For me, it’s about being aware of these different parts of myself and blending them together to get the best of all of them.”

Recognising talent and embracing experiences

Clint relishes the chance to identify and nurture talent.

“I like to mentor people and watch as they succeed,” says Clint. “Mentoring allows you to both pass on knowledge and experiences but also receive

different perspectives and new ideas from your mentees.”

On a more personal level, Clint loves to travel and spend time with his family.

“I think travel creates the opportunity to have memories as opposed to having material things that are just that: material things,” Clint emphasises. “The experiences you can have in travel, from meeting terrific people to doing great things, has been a passion of mine for a long time.

“I'm a strong believer in family values. We just welcomed a new granddaughter to the family and her name is Sophie-Grace. I love to see the family grow and be successful – and I can’t wait to someday look back on it all.”