Small vendors get invite from DIA The airport sets up an area where coffee, snack and flower retailers can sell to people picking up travelers.

Denver International Airport is taking proposals from small businesses interested in selling coffee, flowers and snacks to local residents picking up friends and family at the airport terminal, a new concessions initiative aimed at helping small businesses open up shop at the airport.

The airport has set up a marketplace in the middle of the terminal on the fifth floor by the fountain, with space for flower, coffee and snack vendors.

DIA expects to open the terminal marketplace around January, but officials hope to open as early as November, said Lisa Torres, DIA's manager of concessions.

With the terminal marketplace, the airport is providing capital infrastructure and offering a two-year term, plus three one-year options.

"We wanted to give an opportunity to small businesses," Torres said. "(And) we want to see if we can capture the meeters and greeters that are in that area. They don't seem to wander off to the other concessions. We figured we'd bring the concessions to them."

DIA held a mandatory conference on the terminal marketplace Tuesday. Businesses must be certified as small-business-enterprise concessions, and proposals are due Sept. 26. It's the first time DIA is using a new request-for-proposals process intended to be easier to understand.

Michelle Stefanon, owner of Amore Fiori Flowers & Gifts in the Stapleton area, plans to submit a proposal for the flower shop.

"There's just so much exposure there and so many people at the airport," Stefanon said.

But some existing concessionaires who have invested in their capital infrastructure are upset about benefits for terminal-marketplace concessionaires, such as a built-out space.

"It's unfair," said Deborah Quintana, president and chief executive of World Wide Money Exchange, which has three locations at DIA. "We are the ones that built this airport."

Tamela Lee, director of the city's Division of Small Business Opportunity, said the marketplace spaces are small and aimed at helping small firms compete against huge concessionaire companies.

"I think it's going to be a great way for someone that has always wanted to go into DIA to get an opportunity with relative ease," she said.

Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or [email protected]