In its first foray into food and beverage offerings, HDS Retail North America has opened ThunderCloud Subs and Ruta Maya at Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS).
The two concepts are local favorites. ThunderCloud Subs offers sandwiches, salads, drinks and its trademark ThunderSauce. At Ruta Maya, guests will find organic-based coffee and espresso beverages, frappes, locally produced pastries and baked goods, fruit and yogurt breakfast items, and desserts, as well as alcoholic beverages including beer, wine and coolers.
“It made perfect sense that for our first food and beverage opportunities we chose to work with and develop the two most recognized local Austin venues in Ruta Maya Coffee and ThunderCloud Subs,” says Marco DiBernardo, manager of business development and communications for HDS Retail.
Both eateries, which can be found on the east end of the terminal between Gates 6 and 7, had a soft opening at the beginning of the month and a grand opening Oct. 14. The combined space of the side-by-side stores is 1,400 sq. ft., plus the back operations space.
DiBernardo says both stores have performed above expectations, and there are plans to bring both concepts to other airports.
“The airport ThunderCloud location is already one of the top performers in their network of stores,” he says. “We are very excited that our first step into food and beverage is producing great results and we know we have a successful formula to test the waters in food and beverage.”
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