We all expect to pay a little extra for a beer or a sandwich at the airport. But when a glass of Samuel Adams Summer Ale costs almost $ 30, things really get out of hand.
That’s why New York officials have announced a repression of food and beverage prices at the region’s airports, where sellers can not charge more than “street prices” – what you would pay locally outside the airport – plus 10%.
“No one should have to pay such an exorbitant amount for a beer,” Kevin O’Toole, chairman of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, which oversees airports, said in a news release. The new measures, he said, “make it crystal clear that all prices of concessions will be routinely monitored to ensure that they are adapted to the regional marketplace”.
The figure of 10% is not new, but officials have clarified the rules and stepped up surveillance after some serious violations occurred – all thanks to a single tweet from a young Brooklynite.
Last July, Cooper Lund had some time to kill at New York’s LaGuardia airport, which hosted 15.6 million travelers last year. He thought he was going to have a beer – until he saw the menu.
The seller charged $ 27.85 for Samuel Adams Summer Ale on tap, while other beers ranged from around $ 13 to $ 21. Instead of buying one, Lund tweeted a picture of the alarming price list.
“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous,'” Lund told the Guardian. “I did not notice anyone. I did not notice LaGuardia, I just sent it to enjoy my followers, people I know.”
About a month later, he got a call from a journalist at the New York outlet the City, and it blew up from there.
Not all feedback was welcome. “Every time the story gets dragged, I get a lot – I think of them as angry accountants who say, ‘Well, if you do not want it to cost that much, then do not pay for it,'” he says. . But “it’s not like you can take your own things with you, man. The TSA makes you pour it all out when you come in.”
There are also other reasons for high airport prices. It is expensive to staff an establishment for long airport hours, as industry insiders told Eater in 2015. The rent is high and it is difficult to recruit. “People do not say, ‘I want to be a chef, so I go to an airport and cook,’ Adam Sappington, of Country Cat at Portland International Airport, told the scene.
Lund, a 33-year-old system administrator for a non-profit, never heard directly from the port board, and its announcement last week about the tightened rules – which specifically mentions his tweet – came as a surprise.
The agency says the tweet prompted a study that found that “certain beer prices included an incorrectly added surcharge on top of an increased base price”, which led to 25 customers being charged “the completely unjustifiable amounts of $ 23 or $ 27 (depending on of size) for a beer “.
The concession operator in question, OTG, reimbursed the 25 customers identified in the review, according to the port authority. After Lund’s tweet, the company had tweeted that the Samuel Adams award had been posted incorrectly.
According to the latest rules of the port authority, concession companies must identify “comparable concession sites” outside the airport to prove that their prices are in line with “street pricing policy”. A chain company like Dunkin ‘, for example, should be compared to other branches in the metropolitan area.
Other airports have similar pricing measures in place. For real value, Lund Portland welcomes Oregon International Airport, which requires salespeople not to charge more than they do outside the airport. Baltimore / Washington International Airport also claims to use street rates at its restaurants, while Philadelphia International Airport says the rates are “comparable” to those of outside companies.
But many travelers will not be so lucky. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the busiest travel hub in the United States according to a ranking last year, has recently moved from a road price-plus-10% model to street pricing-plus-15%, an airport spokesman told the Guardian. This means that for the 75.7 million people who passed last year, a beer that would cost $ 7 on the street could run around $ 8.
Denver, which is also among the busiest airports in the country with 58.8 million passengers last year, allows 10% above road prices, a representative said. And in the U.S.’s second most populous city, passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (48 million passengers by 2021) could be charged tolls plus 18%, a spokesman said. Chicago, the second-largest city, allows street prices plus 10% at O’Hare and Midway airports, according to its aviation department.
Of course, these are only the official rules. As Lund says of LaGuardia: “The rules that were already in place clearly did not matter.
“It’s not the $ 27 beer, it’s just the one sticking out. It’s the $ 20 beer, it’s the $ 18 beer, it’s all ridiculously priced across the board. And we accept this as being normal for an airport experience, ”says Lund.
“It’s something where there needs to be oversight.”
