World Champions

Learning from the best: Business people from former Olympic host cities share how they were impacted by the world’s greatest special event.

By Dalia Fahmy

 
Beijing: Summer 2008
Chris McDaniel, co-owner of Beijing’s popular South African restaurant and wine bar Pinotage, runs a tight ship. So when he found himself running out of wine a month before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, he got a little creative.

It’s not that McDaniel didn’t plan for the games well—on the contrary. The South African native, who moved to Beijing three years ago to study Chinese and ended up opening one of the city’s most popular hangouts, knew he wanted to capitalize on the games in a big way. He opened Pinotage three months ahead of the event to great fanfare and put all his marketing efforts into making sure the bar was an established venue before the games started.

“People in Beijing only try a new place on someone else’s recommendation, so we wanted to make sure we established a good reputation,” said McDaniel, who personally invited foreign diplomats, journalists and businessmen to visit the bar.

He played host to the South African hockey team when it came to the city for training, which boosted the bar’s “street cred,” as well as the Canadian Olympic Committee. He installed huge overhead televisions and asked local magazines to list Pinotage as a hot spot to watch the action.

Yet, a month before the Olympics, the unthinkable happened: McDaniel began running out of wine. He serves only South African wines, and knew he would go through thousands of bottles if the Olympics brought in business as expected. So ahead of the games, he ordered 13,000 bottles for arrival in June, which he thought would give him plenty of time to get through customs. Unfortunately, officials, concerned about the threat of terrorism, slowed down custom clearance sharply in June and shut down most imports through ports in July. Not only was McDaniel left stranded without his bottles, he was also worried that the hot summer sun might damage the wine.

“It was a hassle. We had to make do with what we had, and the selection was limited,” he recalled. Luckily, he was able to negotiate with officials and have the shipment moved into a cooled area of the harbor.

To make sure he wouldn’t run out of certain kinds of wine, McDaniel began rotating names on the menu three times a week to ensure he wouldn’t run low on any particular grape. He also began making deals with other South African wine importers, buying a case or two of a certain wine when he found himself running low.

Surprisingly, McDaniel’s biggest piece of advice to other restaurant owners has little to do with imports, but everything to do with red tape.

“You’ve got to make sure you’re in line with regulations in terms of health and safety,” he said.

The last thing local officials want is a food scare or alarming international headlines during the Olympics, so restaurant owners should expect more than their fair share of inspectors ahead of the games.

McDaniel also recommends that restaurant owners make themselves popular with sports fans ahead of time by installing televisions and making sure they are mentioned in all the right magazines.

“If you want to attract business during the games, don’t plan to open a week before, because you want to make sure people get to know you,” he said.

Turin: Winter 2006
Laura Testore, co-owner of the three-star Lancaster Hotel in downtown Turin, Italy, is lucky her hotel was fully booked for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games—because she made little money the rest of the year.

“After the Olympics, there was nothing,” said Testore, who took over the family business with her sister 18 years ago. She says corporate executives, who make up Lancaster’s core clientele, seemed to abandon Turin after the games. “We turned many of our customers away for the month of the Olympics, so maybe they were upset with us and held their conferences in other towns.”

Testore’s experience echoes that of other business owners in Olympic towns. Local companies typically pour all of their efforts into securing business for the games, but once the games are over, businesses find they have to catch up. Plus, travelers tend to write off Olympic cities for several months before and after the games, assuming that they will be too expensive or overcrowded.

Luckily, the income Testore garnered during the Olympics was enough to see her through the end of the year. Her biggest client was a U.S. delegation from Budweiser, which took up 50 of the hotel’s 83 rooms. Testore says she was surprised by the amount of planning done by the beer maker.

“Every three months they called me to make sure everything was OK,” she said, pointing out that the company also frequently changed its reservations. But everything worked out well. “The CEO was very happy with us, and they sent us a letter thanking us.”

For her part, Testore began preparing for the Olympics several years in advance. Lancaster Hotel was completely remodeled and repainted ahead of the games, and modernized to offer in-room Wi-Fi, sophisticated telephone consoles and bigger beds.

During the games, Testore says business went off without a hitch. Local citizens and officials were on their best behavior, street traffic flowed better than usual and deliveries were made in time. Testore didn’t even have trouble hiring additional employees to help manage the extra business, since many Italians were eager to work in Turin that winter.

If anything, Testore warns hoteliers against becoming victims of their own success: Make sure to book post-Olympic business ahead of time or you may find yourself empty-handed.

Athens: Summer 2004
Dionisis Agelakis didn’t have an easy job during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. As business unit manager for food at Elgeka—the contracted food and beverage supplier for the Athens Olympic Village—Agelakis had to make sure that thousands of meals and snacks made it to athletes on time.

The biggest challenge he faced was accommodating special food requests: Several times a week, Elgeka received word from the Village that some guests couldn’t eat certain foods because of religious or dietary reasons. Agelakis and his team sometimes had to assemble some alternatives within a matter of hours.

“They became quite standard, these ad hoc requests from the Village,” Agelakis recalled with a chuckle.

Elgeka doesn’t normally cater such large events. Its core business as a distributor is stocking Greek supermarkets and restaurants with international products such as Melitta coffee filters and Heinz ketchup. However, as the country’s largest food distributor—with headquarters less than a hundred yards from the Village—Elgeka was well positioned to nab a piece of the Olympic pie.

“It was obvious that the Olympics would have a positive effect on certain corporate sectors, including food service,” Agelakis said, pointing out that catering giant and Olympic vendor Aramark won the original contract to supply meals, and offered Elgeka a subcontract.

The deal helped Elgeka post a sharp increase in profits that year, but Agelakis says the bigger benefit came from publicity. The Olympics gave Elgeka a platform to advertise itself to consumers, who generally were only aware of the brands it represents.

“It was good for our image,” Agelakis said, adding that Elgeka took advantage of the event by sending out press releases and taking out newspaper ads. “Because the Olympics is the biggest event in the world, our involvement communicated our capabilities to our trade partners, retailers and consumers.”

To make sure Elgeka’s performance lived up to expectations, the company had to focus all of its efforts on managing logistics. Elgeka started preparing for the games several years in advance by planning meals, contacting suppliers and signing contracts. In May, about four months before the opening ceremony, Elgeka increased its staff by 25 percent and went into 24-hour production.

“It was a big project,” Agelakis said. Elgeka was responsible for assembling everything from hot meals, sandwiches, appetizer platters and fresh fruits to beverages, snacks and tableware. “We are experts in distributing food all over the country, but with this kind of project, there is no room for mistakes.”

Salt Lake City: Winter 2002
Maxine Turner served almost half a million meals at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Well, not Turner alone, but as co-founder of a company that won catering bids for 17 major clients, including the U.S. Olympic Team, AT&T, Nike and American Express. By the end of the games, Turner and her partners had fed more than 350,000 guests at buffets, parties, dinners and fundraisers—and supplied 150,000 box lunches.

“You start small, and business grows as you get closer to the games,” said Turner, CEO of Cuisine Unlimited Catering & Special Events, pointing out that she gradually picked up new clients, who then kept adding events. “When I look back, I’m amazed at what we accomplished.”

Cuisine Unlimited wasn’t originally big enough to handle so many clients. When Turner began bidding for Olympic business in 1999, she only had 20 employees who worked out of a cramped 2,000-square-foot kitchen.

However, she had subcontracted catering work at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, so she had experience with the process. When she began bidding for the games in Salt Lake City, she asked her contractor, New York-based caterer Framboise, if it wanted to form a joint venture.

“Salt Lake City isn’t known as a culinary hub, so I knew that adding the panache of a New York partner would be a feather in our cap,” she said.

Cuisine Unlimited built a new, 20,000-square-foot headquarters, complete with customized kitchens and giant refrigerators. And Turner marketed her business aggressively. She printed portfolios, complete with theme menus, mouthwatering photographs and bios of company executives and sent them to all Olympic Committee members. As sponsors were announced, she sent them her portfolio too, and offered to cater regular business events for them so they could get to know her company. She also sent her portfolio to the Salt Lake CVB, the chamber of commerce and the economic development office.

“Our goal was to capture as much business during the games and not take on so much that the quality would be compromised,” she said.

By the time the games began, Turner and her partners were working around the clock, managing hundreds of employees and driving to dozens of events to make sure everything was running as planned.

The biggest challenge she faced was catering a brunch for American Express, at a Girl Scout camp nestled in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The problem was simple: In the winter, the log cabins are only accessibly by snowmobile. To make matters worse, snowmobiles are by law not allowed to run in the middle of the night, which is when caterers typically begin preparing breakfasts.

“We went back to American Express and said, ‘We have a problem here,’” Turner recalled. “How are we going to get all the food, the linens and dishes up there?”

Luckily, Turner had more than a year to plan the event and decided to have staff transport all the fresh food the day before, and spend the night in sleeping bags in bunk beds. Linens, silverware, china and decorative centerpieces, meanwhile, were driven up by car before the mountain became covered in snow—the previous fall.

“We had to stock all the dry goods in October before snow fell, and we couldn’t pick up our equipment until May the following year,” she said.

Turner’s creativity paid off. Today, Cuisine Unlimited has 110 employees and makes US$4.5 million in revenue each year. Turner managed to parlay her Olympic expertise into more bids and has since catered for the U.S. Olympic teams in Athens and Turin.

Atlanta: Summer 1996
Barbara Nolan had been running her metro Atlanta FASTSIGNS franchise for 12 years when she was invited to supply signs for the Global Village at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. With only six employees at the time, her company was really too small to be an Olympic vendor. But years of networking and marketing paid off, and two large Olympic contractors ended up subcontracting work to her. In a six-week period she boosted revenue by US$50,000.

“It’s all about getting your name out there and building relationships,” Nolan said. She points out that the Olympic Committee doesn’t even invite small business owners to bid on projects, and that only those entrepreneurs with connections to the big league get a slice of the pie.

That means that small businesses have to align themselves with big players. And that’s what Nolan did. For years, she had been building relationships with the two largest signage companies in the U.S. Southeast, offering her services and passing on job leads that were too big for her. She also made sure to market herself as a woman-owned business, not because the Olympic Committee necessarily requires diverse vendors, but because it helped her differentiate herself.

“You try to plug yourself in as many places as you possibly can,” she said.

When the time came, Nolan won the contract to make all of the signs that went into the Global Village: hundreds of boards that told visitors and athletes where to find bathrooms, exits or dorms. To cope with the volume, Nolan hired three more staffers and everyone worked around the clock. To ensure she wouldn’t run out of supplies, Nolan kept her then 1,400-square-foot shop stacked with as many letters, boards and posts as possible.

Despite all her planning, Nolan ran into trouble on the second day of the Olympics: All of the signs warped in the hot Atlanta sun. The games’ architects had insisted on using thin, sea foam green PVC sheets for the signs, even though Nolan had warned them the material wouldn’t withstand the heat.

“Within one day all the signage at the Global Village had warped, and we had to bring it all back into the store,” said Nolan, whose staff then recreated the signs within a day on stiffer material.

But, Nolan didn’t get angry and didn’t ask for a big surcharge to get the job done.

“That’s what we’re here for. You never gouge someone. That’s how you get a solid reputation,” she said, adding that it’s more important to keep a good relationship with her clients than make a quick buck.

Her attitude worked, and after the Olympics, the company that had subcontracted her gave her plenty more work. Today she has grown her franchise into a $1.3 million business.

She was also profiled in a local newspaper, and believes that her participation in the Olympics helped establish her reputation as a reliable small business.

“When you’re in a city like Salt Lake or Atlanta, the people in town know that if you did work for the Olympics, you’re a big deal, because it’s hard to get your foot in the door.” One+

DALIA FAHMY is a freelance international business writer. 

Golden Advice
• Restaurant owners should expect a higher number of health inspections as the Olympic Games approach.
• It is advisable for new venues to invest in popularizing their business locally ahead of the games.
• Hotels should book post-Olympic business prior to the games in order to ensure steady income after the Olympic surge has retreated.
• The best way for small businesses to compete for Olympic contracts is as subcontractors for larger organizations.
• Make your business shine throughout the games, even if you sustain a greater cost, as the subsequent work from such exposure can be invaluable and grow your company exponentially.
• Remember, it’s more important to keep a good relationship with clients than make a quick buck for a one-off business contract.

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