How much for a shine?
Master Shine at Hartsfield-Jackson: $7 for shoes, $8 for boots
Las Vegas-based Goodfellows Shoeshine: typically $10, but varies by market
Charles Sanders has been shining shoes at the Atlanta airport for so long he remembers when Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders would meet at the old terminal before heading out on trips.
“They came from different parts of the city and always met at the shoeshine stand,” said Sanders. “Hosea Williams, Andy Young, Ralph Abernathy … ”
Sanders, 77, co-owns Master Shine with four other shoeshiners and has worked the airport since around 1963. But he could soon face some big competition as Hartsfield-Jackson International prepares to issue new shoeshine contracts for the first time in 17 years.
The process is already promising to pit the small, homegrown Atlanta business against a fast-growing chain with big ambitions.
Airport managers propose more than doubling the number of shoeshine stands under two new contracts, expanding beyond those now operated by Master Shine at Terminal South, Terminal North and concourses A and B.
“We’ve been trying to do this for a while,” said Pat Armes, Hartsfield-Jackson’s concessions manager. “We really want to freshen up our program … What we’re trying to do is get shoeshine on every concourse.”
Master Shine has held the contract on a month-to-month basis since the last deal expired.
Sanders says he’ll have to pay a consultant to work through a 159-page request for proposals on a new and expanded contract.
“I don’t like it. But there’s nothing I can do about it,” he says, adding, “I can’t afford to retire.”
The airport plans to offer nine locations split among two contracts, which it wants to award to two different companies.
The rebid opens the business to operators who have had an eye on the world’s busiest airport, including a shoeshine mogul from Las Vegas.
Shelley Bonner-Carson, CEO of Goodfellows Shoeshine of Las Vegas, flew to Atlanta for a recent meeting for businesses interested in the contracts. The other two firms attending were Master Shine and Final Touch Shoes, which has stands around Atlanta. Other competitors could arise before the deadline for proposals. The shoeshine stands under the new contract would likely open next year.
Beyond restrooms
Bonner-Carson started Goodfellows in 1992 at the Circus Circus casino on the Las Vegas strip, and she describes in a slick video on her website how she brought shoeshining out of the men’s restrooms there, then expanded to other resorts and several big airports.
Her goal: To be in every major U.S. airport.
Bonner-Carson says the shoeshine operation in Atlanta has been left alone “and people put their blinders to it.”
The shoeshine operation is required to fulfill requirements for “disadvantaged business enterprises,” including woman-owned businesses, as Goodfellows is, and black-owned businesses.
The shoeshine contract has been one of the last remaining month-to-month airport contracts, even as the airport rebid other controversial contracts to address those that had not been competitively bid in years.
Other airports that have rebid their shoeshine contracts have come under fire for appearing to push out long-time shoeshiners and taking away their means of making a living.
In Atlanta, Sanders worries a big company will try to win the Atlanta airport contract and hire him and his fellow long-time shoeshiners to do the work.
“What they do is they come in and they get the bids, and they want you to work with them,” Sanders said. “We ain’t gonna do that. Every business around here does that — feeds you the crumbs.”
Sanders says he’s leery of Bonner-Carson’s operation. “She ain’t never shined a shoe in her life,” he said.
In need of a shine
Bonner-Carson, in fact, said she started her business as the company owner, because “I needed my shoes shined and I couldn’t get it done.”
“The whole point,” she said, was to bring the shoeshiners out of men’s restrooms and into an area where “everybody could use the service.”
On whether her business might hire current airport shoeshiners if she wins the contract, Bonner-Carson said experienced shoeshiners can bring “a lot of value … they can be good ambassadors.” But she added that “a new broom sweeps clean. We have to have our company standards to the T. If they are ready and willing and able to go along with our policies, everybody is welcome to apply.”
“We’ve taken this business to another level,” she said. “Let us come and do our magic here.”
Sanders is intent on Master Shine maintaining a contract on its own. The way the contracts are structured, two shoeshine businesses would be in head-to-head competition in the domestic terminal — one on the Terminal North side, one on the Terminal South side.
“They cannot shine shoes like we can,” Sanders said of potential competitors. “They clean shoes. There’s a difference between cleaning shoes and shining shoes … It ain’t no competition.”
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