On the topic of local versus national, I’ve been writing a lot about this lately, mainly regarding food & beverage. In the USA there’s a big move towards genuine local. But it is quite difficult for F&B operators because they make their real money from proprietary brands, where they have better margins. In Asia, according to an interview I did with the head of SSP in the region, it’s a bit different: there’s more focus on local, uber-local or international. What’s the feeling in Düsseldorf?

Pia Klauck: I’m smirking a bit because I feel like we’ve been through this before. You need the big ones, like McDonald’s and Burger King; that’s for sure. And there’s a huge market for it, especially for international customers or even customers with different ethnic backgrounds. If you want chicken, you want chicken.

But being so connected to the region, we’ve always had our small Turkish place because the Turkish community is big in this region. You can’t just have a generic, non-authentic, built-up Turkish Delight situation from SSP, Lagardère or whoever. You need people who actually speak Turkish behind the counter and bring that authentic atmosphere, be the life of the party.

We’ve always had that. We have the German bakery. Germany is a big bread world. So you have to have that at the airport. Of course, there are the bigger brands and the franchise brands, but we made a less commercial decision to also have a small brand.

We also have a traditional Düsseldorf bakery brand called Terbuyken with two locations. This sets us apart from some other airports, but it’s often difficult because it’s a hard decision commercially. Smaller brands are never going to be able to pay like the larger players, let’s be honest.

It’s a balance: we try to implement local brands as much as possible. Sometimes we even bring franchises together. For example, we have a local brand which wants to come into the airport but doesn’t know how, and we put brought them together with SSP to create a new coffee concept, bringing something from downtown into the airport. That sometimes works. It’s easier for us, however, than the SSPs.

Especially in F&B – and we’re in the middle of a tender process now, so there will be news at the end of this year – the local element plays a huge role. Retail is a bit more difficult because of the margins, and it’s not always popular to bring in a small retail brand to a Lagardère and make a franchise out of it.

Usually it’s the people who make the difference. For example, we had a perfume pop-up run by a local entrepreneur, and you could see the difference in sales when she was on-site versus when her employees were there.

During the Euro 2024 [football] tournament, we set up a space for sports fans with jerseys from different regional soccer teams, because it’s so big here, and people watched the games together and debated about the best team. That’s a very German thing – arts and sports. People watched soccer together in the space on a huge TV and took pictures in front of their favourite team. Our CEO even sat with passengers who were just walking in, watching and just having a conversation.

We have something called the Space Walk... a collaboration with a young entrepreneur with a store in Düsseldorf downtown who specialises in really trendy sneakers that are hard to find, like, say the Adidas or Nike with special colours. And, of course, those people are never going to work together with a Lagardère, that's not how it works. So you need to make it easier for these little stores to come in, be able to just stay there for a couple of months, try it out, almost like a promotion that says, “This is what we do. This is what we can do.” With F&B, we always did it, and we try to emphasise it even more in retail now.