Editor’s Note: Airport Experience News launched the ACDBE of Distinction awards in 2024 to honor small, Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprises-certified firms that excel in their field. The program continues this year. Greg Plummer, founder of Concord Collective Partners and Enjoy Repeat, is one of four winners for 2025.
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Concord Collective Partners and Enjoy Repeat founder Greg Plummer has always been drawn to the restaurant business. Growing up in Detroit, a 15-year-old Plummer’s first job was working at a local restaurant as “everything from a dishwasher to a busboy – you name it, and I did it,” says Plummer. “I loved the energy and the spirit of hospitality.”
Plummer continued his work in restaurants while attending Morehouse College. While he planned to transition to a career in finance post-graduation, he soon felt the call of the hospitality industry beckoning him back. “I moved to California, I worked in finance for a year, but I felt myself missing the experience of working with people and the social element of [restaurants],” says Plummer.
After a year at financial firm Morgan Stanley, Plummer made the jump to airport concessions, working as an assistant manager with Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) ACDBE concessionaire CMS Hospitality. “I instantly fell in love with the airport, with understanding how a small business worked and with the concessions the community at LAX, and that was 20 years ago today,” says Plummer. “It wasn’t all glamorous, [but] it was fascinating to interact with different people from around the world every day, and [learn to] problem solve. I found myself back where I belong working with people in hospitality.”
After 12 years with CMS, Plummer found himself at a crossroads as Daniels prepared to retire. When CMS sold the business to HMSHost, “it was a whirlwind,” says Plummer. “I took two weeks off and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do [next]. And I realized that I really wanted to be an entrepreneur.” Plummer founded his own hospitality company, Enjoy Repeat, in 2016, “and my original strategy was to focus on becoming a joint venture partner with a prime company,” he says. “At the time, a lot of the primes had their preferred partners at LAX. I was approached by a friend of mine from SSP America, who gave me an opportunity.”
Enjoy Repeat became a part of a successful 2017 bid for spots in LAX’s Terminal 1. In working with SSP America, Plummer got an even more granular experience managing the ups and downs of concessions at one of the world’s busiest airports and found his time at CMS had served him well.
“I worked for a guy who gave me a lot of autonomy to learn, so I knew I had what it takes to go for it. I believed I could actually be a partner who added tremendous value,” says Plummer.
The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent travel shutdown tested his meddle. Plummer found himself consulting with various concessions companies. “I got a call from the same friend who worked at SSP who said, ‘We’re interested in selling [SSP’s LAX business].’ I immediately started thinking about it and said: ‘Sell it to me — I’m already here,’” says Plummer.
SSP agreed, but Plummer had another challenge ahead: raising funds. “Imagine raising money to buy an airport contract in the midst of the devastation caused by Covid,” laughs Plummer. “It was a very difficult lift.”
To do so, Plummer gathered a group of fellow ACDBE concessionaires across the country to form an investor partnership now known as Concord Collective and became the first 100% minority-owned small business to take over eight locations at LAX from a prime concessionaire.
“It was a large undertaking, with a lot of work and coordination, [but] I felt like my whole career was building up to this moment,” says Plummer, noting that he was determined to make the venture work as a way of proving that airports could consider ACDBE partners as “real operators.”
Plummer also has plans for Concord Collective Partners / Enjoy Repeat to expand, with eyes on widening their scope at LAX through new partnerships with Wolfgang Puck, Black Tap Singles & Doubles, and Tender Crush as well as developing the company’s capacities in both workforce development and logistics.
“Beyond our immediate growth at LAX,” says Plummer, “we are enthusiastic about pending long-term concessions opportunities outside of Los Angeles and several new joint venture partnerships where our larger prime counterparts recognize our unique value proposition.”
Plummer’s steady rise has been noticed across the industry, too. “Leveraging his experience as a former LAX concession manager and his sharp business acumen, Greg has emerged as a prime concessionaire and a powerful example of the entrepreneurial spirit at the heart of the ACDBE program,” says Richard Schneider, chief development officer for Areas USA.
Outside his work with Concord Collective and Enjoy Repeat, Plummer stays busy on both the boards of the Airport Minority Advisory Council (AMAC), the Airport Restaurant & Retail Association (ARRA), and on the executive committee for the Alliance for Economic Fairness.
Giving back through such organizations is a “responsibility for us,” adds Plummer. “We have to show up, we have to give something greater than trying to just help ourselves.”
