A Delivery App for Busy Air Travelers Seeks to Tap Into Rising Concession Sales

The home-delivery craze is starting to manifest itself at other venues, with the airport representing the latest example. With a new mobile app, harried passengers can have food or other products from airport stores delivered to them as they sit at their gates.

The free app, called AtYourGate, comes from a Newport Beach, Calif.-based startup by the same name and Fans Entertainment, a Montreal-based company that builds mobile-ordering software, as well as the San Diego International Airport’s Innovation Lab. Payments are handled by Paysafe, a United Kingdom-based processor and Fans Entertainment’s parent company.

AtYourGate on Thursday went live commercially at the San Diego airport and can be used by flight crews and airport personnel as well as passengers. Seven restaurants and stores inside the airport are participating, including Saffron Thai, Artisan Market, Panda Express, Qdoba Mexican, Jack-in-the-Box, CNBC News and Gifts, and the Donut Bar. Another 25 are expected to go live by the end of the year, according to a jointly issued press release from the companies. There are 80 such locations in the airport, which was used by some 22 million passengers last year.

While AtYourGate does not require a minimum order, it does levy a $2.99 delivery fee, according to a spokesperson for Paysafe.

Following the San Diego deployment, the principals say they will make the app available at other airports in North America and Europe. The opportunity, they say, is growing fast along with airport concession sales. Dollar volume for airport eateries and stores in the United States and Canada is expected to expand from about $4.2 billion in 2015 to nearly $10 billion by 2020, according to data from Micromarket Monitor cited in the release.

As with home delivery, the idea behind AtYourGate is convenience, particularly at an airport full of time-pressed passengers, the people behind the product say. “When we proposed the idea of the app to San Diego International Airport, everyone agreed that we were addressing a real need for both airport consumers and retailers,” said P.J. Mastracchio, founder and chief executive of AtYourGate LLC, in a statement.

The app, which works on both Apple Inc. and Google devices, seems popular, though reviews are sparse. It gets a five-star rating from nine reviewers on Apple’s App Store and the same rating from five reviewers on Google Play. Downloads total 1,400 so far, according to the Paysafe spokesperson.