Airport Concessions in the USA
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Which is why they are opening a center for Equity and Diversity in Aviation rather then fixing the escalators (which have their cult following simply because of often they are broken) or having a reasonable rental car facility, or simply renovating bathrooms in the concourses.
How screwy any given implementation becomes is of course, fully at the hands of the local authority, and whatever slush fund silliness they have in mind. From skimming through, it seems like there's an overall very soft 10% "target" in terms of disadvantaged businesses. I think the law literally says that there is a national 10% target, but individual entity (so a single airport for example) are not allowed to take that 10% as a quota or target.
Is your count perhaps including all the businesses in the airport?
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_International_Airport
(And yes, thats many different companies and businesses - but it's also 3x the size of any company on that list)
It's a long list, and most of it seems fairly standard, a mix of "airport stuff" and "buying a concession in a popular location" stuff.
Anyone who has done government contracting has seen this, too. Generally, what happens is the prime contractor who the government actually hires must be underrepresented minority-owned. That contractor might just be one person who own a shell LCC, whose job is to simply "be Native Alaskan" or something. Then that prime will subcontract out to regular, name brand companies that actually do all the work. As far as I've seen, this is a pretty common and well-understood pattern, at least in mil/aerospace.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131211005139/en/Guy...
Another place you might see this is cannabis dispensary licenses being preferenced towards those who've been jailed for cannabis-related crimes.
In all the cases, it's likely someone who historically hasn't been paid well, so I personally don't care, since it seems to me like the preference is achieving its desired effect in the end (said person getting paid).
But I digress. In the biz, if the contract has to be trafficked through a shell corp where the owner takes a 20% cut, everyone simply bids a 20% higher rate.
It's the taxpayer's prerogative if they would rather their government pay an inflated contracting rate -- as opposed to using that money for education, infrastructure, social services, etc.
The desired effect is stratify the populace into more and more tribes that can fight amongst themselves. You give special treatment to some, thereby weakening political opposition and obtaining plausible deniability to say that you helped.
If you want to help someone who hasn’t been paid well historically, then you pull up the database of tax filings, sort from lowest to highest and deposit some money, or give them access to education, or blah blah. “Historically not paid well” has nothing to do with skin tone, religion, gender, or anything other than history of income.
I know what everyone is thinking. But I’m wondering if Spirit customers spend more on concessions. Of the handful of times I’ve flown spirit I’ve seen a lot of drinks/snacks/food in hands of customers purchased at the terminal.
(This is ironic, because generally every time I line a low-cost-carrier up against a mainline airline like Delta, once the baggage is added that is generally free on a mainline the ticket cost is within $50-100 of each other, and worth paying the extra few bucks to not have as much hassle.)