Padraig Drennan and the shop before the flight

Fifty-one stores across ten airports is a considerable way to begin a new job. In May 2019, only months after Padraig Drennan became president and CEO of Stellar Partners, the Tampa-based retailer completed its acquisition of Pacific Gateway Concessions. The deal brought its portfolio to more than 100 news, convenience and specialty stores in nearly 20 US airports. A traveler could encounter the consequences while doing something as unceremonious as buying a magazine.

The announcement put an estimated $85.6 million in annualized sales on the acquired business. That was a forecast attached to a transaction, rather than a report of money already earned. Even with that distinction, the purchase made Drennan’s early direction visible. The company he had been hired to run was extending its reach, taking on stores, staff and relationships well beyond its home airport.

Airport retail makes an unusual stage for an executive career. Its customers have tickets, deadlines and an excellent excuse to leave. A luxury boutique and a convenience counter occupy the same terminal but answer very different needs. Drennan had already worked across those formats. His route to Stellar ran through familiar high-street names, financial leadership and an airport retail business on the other side of the Atlantic.

The high street comes along for the ride

Drennan began his career at Arthur Andersen. Management positions at Disney Stores, Gap and Marks and Spencer followed. At World Duty Free UK, he served as chief financial officer. There is a useful breadth to that sequence: accounting, recognizable retail brands, then the economics of selling to people in transit. His eventual chief executive role drew on a career that had crossed both business functions and borders.

Working for a retailer with a familiar name means carrying an expectation into every new location. Disney Stores and Gap have identities customers recognize before they examine the merchandise. Bringing such businesses into another market requires the physical shop to deliver on that familiarity. That is one way to read Drennan’s later airport work: a recurring problem of making a brand intelligible in a different setting.

In October 2012, World Duty Free Group announced an agreement to acquire HMSHost’s US retail operations. Drennan was its newly appointed North America president. The planned addition comprised 240 outlets in 32 US airports and other locations, including tourist attractions. His responsibilities at World Duty Free North America covered news and gifts, duty free and specialty retail. The range mattered. Each format had its own products and customer expectations.

A news-and-gifts counter invites a quick, practical purchase. A specialty store depends on interest in a particular brand or category. Duty free brings another set of rules and expectations. Overseeing all three meant working across several versions of the airport shopping experience. The terminal was the common address; the retail work inside it was far from uniform.

A ribbon in Miami

In September 2015, that work had a particularly visible form at Miami International Airport. World Duty Free Group and Master ConcessionAir introduced five locations between concourses H and J: standalone MAC, Desigual and Coach stores, alongside Tumi and Tous kiosks. Together they occupied 3,531 square feet. The names would be familiar to many passengers arriving from a city shopping district.

Drennan appeared in the ribbon-cutting photograph with airport deputy director Ken Pyatt and Miami-Dade commissioner Bruno A. Barreiro. Orange balloons hovered above the ceremony. There is something pleasingly literal about an airport opening: after the negotiations and the planning, somebody still needs to cut a ribbon. Here was a retail executive whose financial and operational responsibilities ended in actual doors, counters and merchandise.

The opening also showed the company he kept in the course of the job. An airport retail project brings together the brand, the operator, the airport and local public officials. The photograph compresses those relationships into a ceremonial moment. It does not tell us what happened at every negotiating table. It does show how many interests stand behind a storefront that a passenger might scarcely pause to notice.

A founder leaves the keys

Before joining Stellar, Drennan served as chief operating officer of DFASS Group. His appointment as Stellar’s president and COO was announced in October 2017. Susan Stackhouse, then its CEO, had recruited an executive with experience of both airport operations and broader retail management. He would be based at the company’s Tampa headquarters and take responsibility for its operations.

By January 2019, Stackhouse was preparing to retire after leading the company for 30 years. She had started Stellar with a single duty-free store at Tampa International Airport. Drennan became president and CEO. The succession connected a long local business history with the international retail experience of the incoming leader. His task was to run a company whose story had begun decades before his arrival.

Drennan’s public comments acknowledged that inheritance. In 2020, he credited Stackhouse and her team with establishing the business’s foundation. The observation placed the team alongside the founder. It also explained why a change in pace could rest on work already done. The Pacific Gateway purchase was an expansion of an existing operation, with all the responsibilities that distinction implies.

“Susan built an excellent team and together they established a strong foundation for the business.”

Padraig Drennan, February 2020

He described four routes to further growth: acquisitions, winning contracts, extending them and negotiating directly. The list is more revealing than a promise to become bigger. Airport stores need places to operate, and those places involve agreements. A transaction can add an existing portfolio; a contract can establish or retain a location. The shopper sees the assortment. The executive also sees the arrangement that allows it to be there.

A city, a brand, a boarding pass

Acquisitions were one part of Drennan’s first year as CEO. Stellar’s debut at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport involved three different store concepts. Marika, the athleisure brand, opened its first brick-and-mortar shop there. Stellar News and White House Black Market were also part of the new offering. An airport had become the address for a brand’s first physical store.

The BWI program involved Fraport Maryland, the developer and manager of the retail program, and Morgan Group Ventures, Stellar’s joint-venture partner for Stellar News. The collaboration gives some texture to the word “operations.” The CEO’s title sits above work involving several organizations. Making the shop happen requires relationships as well as merchandise, and the resulting choice of stores reflects more than one company’s participation.

At LaGuardia, Stellar opened Fiorello Market and the technology concept iPorte during Drennan’s tenure. Fiorello Market took its name from Fiorello Henry LaGuardia, New York’s 99th mayor, and combined specialty and convenience retail with national and regional selections. iPorte offered technology brands and interactive stations. One format referred to the city; the other invited travelers to engage with products.

Seen together, these openings suggest a portfolio organized around different reasons to shop. Someone may recognize a clothing brand. Someone else may want a local selection or an electronic accessory. Putting those options into a terminal gives the passenger choices within a constrained setting. There is room for discovery, provided the customer can still make the flight. No shopkeeper can reasonably expect to outrank the gate agent.

When the newsstand meets the news feed

Stellar’s interest in recognizable names extended to media. By February 2020, it had opened a permanent WIRED electronics and accessories store at Newark Liberty International Airport in partnership with Condé Nast. A publication associated with technology had become part of a physical retail proposition. The association between the name and the merchandise was easy to understand.

In 2022, Stellar announced a collaboration with BuzzFeed to develop airport convenience stores across the United States. The first two were planned for LaGuardia’s new Terminal C that spring. The announced assortment included travel supplies, snacks, magazines, beauty and lifestyle items. Self-checkout would handle purchases, while screens throughout the stores would carry BuzzFeed news and entertainment.

It was a striking turn for the familiar airport newsstand. A digital media name was moving onto the storefront of a business that still sold physical magazines and practical supplies. The format joined several habits in one place: browsing, watching and buying. Its commercial appeal depended on a recognizable identity, but its everyday purpose remained close to the needs of a traveler between flights.

Those partnerships fit the longer arc of Drennan’s career. Disney Stores and Gap brought established identities into new settings. World Duty Free offered experience across several kinds of airport retail. Stellar supplied a setting for trying combinations of convenience, technology and media. Reading those chapters together suggests continuity in the work, even when the name over the doorway changed.

Back to the shop floor

Drennan’s role also extended into industry representation. In July 2022, the International Association of Airport and Duty Free Stores elected him vice chairman. He returned to that position in 2023 for the board term through June 2024, alongside chairman René Riedi and treasurer and audit chair Erasmo Orillac. Leadership in an association placed him at another table where the industry’s shared interests were discussed.

The less photogenic work continued too. A San Francisco airport lease amendment signed in April 2024 identifies him as Stellar’s CEO and president. It is a small reminder of what sits beneath the visible retail experience: agreements, locations and obligations. The first-year acquisition made a large statement. A signature on a lease belongs to the same job, carried out at a different scale.

Following Drennan from accounting and high-street retail to those airport agreements reveals a career built around the organization of shops. The brands change, and the portfolios expand. The final encounter is still modest: a traveler walks in, chooses something and leaves for a flight. Every executive decision eventually has to reach that floor. The departure announcement supplies the deadline.