Evolvending and Canteen have won a concession covering almost 30 automated dining locations at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport (MSP), promising travellers “around-the-clock access” to brands from TGI Fridays to Wow Bao from January 2027. The phased rollout will replace and supplement staffed counters with branded food kiosks and automated vending across the terminal, under a concession the Metropolitan Airports Commission approved on 22 September 2026 as part of its Automated Retail and Food Service Concessions programme.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission has not published a contract value for the deal, which is typical for concessions of this type where revenue is structured around space rent and sales share rather than a disclosed upfront figure. What is confirmed is scale: almost 30 locations across one airport is a large single award for the automated dining category, comparable in ambition to the expansion other operators have pursued through conventional leases, such as SSP’s eight-outlet opening at Vilnius Airport.
Canteen, part of Compass Group North America, will act as prime contractor on the MSP programme, with Evolvending supplying hot-food vending equipment, specialist brand relationships and operational support. The two companies already work together at other US airports, and MSP is their largest joint automated food programme to date by site count.
The brand line-up includes TGI Fridays, Twisted Taco and Garbanzo, all making their first airport appearances, alongside California Pizza Kitchen, Wow Bao, White Castle, The Amish Pretzels and Farmer’s Fridge. Evolvending’s Evolve EATS platform underpins several of these concepts, extending its branded hot-food vending into a concourse-wide footprint rather than isolated kiosks.
Canteen District General Manager Heinrich Von Mende said the goal is to cut the time travellers spend searching for food: “By making quality food easier to find throughout the airport, we’re helping guests spend less time searching for a meal and more time focused on their journey.” Evolvending co-founder and chief executive Valentina Ellison said the award “reflects the power of bringing together Canteen’s national scale and operational excellence with Evolvending’s specialty automated-food expertise.”
For airport commercial directors, the read here is less about the brand list and more about contract structure: a national foodservice contractor paired with a specialist automated-vending operator, splitting prime-contractor duties from equipment and brand sourcing. It is a model that reduces staffing exposure on labour-tight routes and extends opening hours without round-the-clock rostering, a tradeoff concession teams weighing automated formats against partnership deals, like Swissport’s joint venture entry into Indonesia, will recognise. It will not suit every concourse: automated formats work best where footfall is high and dwell time is short, and they compress the margin upside that landlords can capture compared with premium staffed dining, a tension also visible in WHSmith’s recent profit fall tied to airport mix shift.
MSP’s commercial team has effectively published a template: pair a national contractor with a specialist vendor, name the brands early, and let scale do the negotiating. Airports evaluating automated F&B should ask both prospective partners what site density and footfall threshold make the economics work, not just which brands are available.
Source: Moodie Davitt Report, 3 October 2026.
