HMSHost Brand Guidelines: An 1897 Railroad News Firm, Marriott, Autogrill and Avolta

A railroad news company in Kansas City.

HMSHost traces its roots to the railways. English Wikipedia says the company’s origins lie in the Van Noy Railway News and Hotel Company, founded by the Van Noy brothers of Kansas City, Missouri. Its article on that company says Ira Clinton Van Noy started a cigar and news business in 1893, and that on 26 July 1897 he and two of his brothers, with a partner from St. Louis, incorporated the Van Noy Railroad News Company. Railroad news services sold newspapers, magazines, tobacco, fruit and novelties from station stands and through “news butches,” young sellers who walked the length of the trains.

The business grew with the railways. Wikipedia says contracts with the Missouri Pacific led to Van Noy eating houses along that system, at a time when most trains carried no dining cars, and later to hotels for travellers and for train crews between runs. By 1910, it says, the company had 52 hotels and restaurants and 20 concession stores. Walt Disney spent a summer in 1916 working for the Van Noy Interstate Company as a news butch, according to an article he later wrote for Railroad Magazine, as cited by Wikipedia.

Mergers and new names followed. Wikipedia lists the purchase of the Brown News Company in 1914, a consolidation with the New York-based Interstate News Company from 1915, and the name Interstate Company from 1926. As railways added dining cars, the business turned to station restaurants, lunch rooms in bus stations and hotels; between 1928 and 1932, Wikipedia says, it owned and ran the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Airports, Marriott and Autogrill.

Airports came after the Second World War. Wikipedia says the Interstate Company won its first airport contract, at San Francisco International Airport, in 1954, became Interstate HOSTS in 1959, by which time its railroad station restaurants had closed, and took the name Host International in 1968. The Marriott Corporation acquired it in 1982.

The Marriott years ended with a split. An Associated Press report published by the Deseret News on 26 July 1999 said Host Marriott Corporation had been created in 1993, when Marriott Corporation divided its hotel-management and property businesses, and that Host Marriott Services had been spun off by Host Marriott in 1995; English Wikipedia dates the creation of Host Marriott Services Corporation to 2 January 1996. The AP described Host Marriott Services, based in Bethesda, Maryland, as the American leader in restaurant concessions, present at 18 of the 20 biggest airports in the United States, with rights to Burger King, Pizza Hut and Starbucks.

That AP report announced the next owner. Autogrill, the Italian motorway restaurant company, then controlled by Benetton according to the AP, said its offer for Host Marriott Services had been unanimously approved by the American company’s board. English Wikipedia says the purchase, in 1999, gave Autogrill its first entry into the United States and into airport concessions, and that the company was renamed HMSHost. Italian Wikipedia adds that in 2003 the group bought a majority of Anton Airfood and founded HMSHost International for airports outside North America.

The motorway side shrank in 2021. The Moodie Davitt Report reported on 31 March 2021 that HMSHost had agreed to sell its US motorways business, more than 60 service areas in eight states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, to a consortium led by Blackstone Infrastructure Partners that included the service-area operator Applegreen; its New York Thruway contract was not part of the deal. English Wikipedia records the sale as made that year. In Canada, Wikipedia says, a joint venture made HMSHost a partner in Ontario’s ONroute service centres from 2010 to 2019.

Design and documentation.

Most companies in travel retail and travel dining sell under other names as well as their own. HMSHost, part of Avolta, says it works with more than 400 international, regional, local and proprietary brands, and SSP divides its portfolio between concepts it has created and brands it franchises from other companies, according to their websites. Their corporate sites speak to two audiences at once: HMSHost’s has pages for business developers and partners, and SSP’s has sections on its markets, its brands and its investors, alongside the restaurant and shop names a traveller actually sees.

Trade press describes the units themselves in practical terms. Reports in The Moodie Davitt Report give a venue’s floor area, its seat count, whether it sits airside or landside and how many self-order kiosks it has, as in its March 2025 account of a 65-seat Shake Shack at Boston Logan. They often stress local character too: SSP’s November 2026 opening at Auckland Airport was described as a coffee-led café drawing on New Zealand’s coffee culture.

Industry awards give design its own categories. The 2025 FAB Awards, organised by The Moodie Davitt Report, included Airport Restaurant Design of the Year and Airport Food Hall of the Year, according to SSP’s list of its wins, and HMSHost lists airport bar and restaurant awards from readers’ polls and trade titles on its own site. Motorway sites mix the same elements: in 2021 the same publication described HMSHost’s American service areas as combining branded food and drink concepts with convenience retail.

Ownership is part of the story these companies tell. HMSHost explains that it joined Avolta in 2023 after Dufry and Autogrill combined, and SSP’s history page runs from an airline catering division founded in 1961 to a London listing in 2014. This guide sets out who founded each company, who owns it now and which brands it runs, and keeps each company’s own claims apart from what independent dated sources report.

Feeling Good on the Move.

The current owner arrived in 2023. HMSHost’s own FAQ says it became part of Avolta AG that year, following the business combination of Dufry, the parent of the travel retailer Hudson, and Autogrill, the parent of HMSHost; the combined group operates under the Avolta name. HMSHost describes itself as “a subsidiary of Avolta” and says it runs more than 1,000 locations in nearly 80 airports across North America. In July 2025 GTR reported a new ten-year food and beverage contract at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport announced by Avolta, and said Avolta’s HMSHost already ran more than 20 dining venues there.

Its offer is built from other companies’ brands as much as its own. HMSHost says it was the first to bring brands into airport and travel plaza settings, in the early 1980s, and that it now holds more than 400 international, regional, local and proprietary brands, naming Starbucks, Shake Shack, California Pizza Kitchen and Tim Hortons among its partners. In March 2025 The Moodie Davitt Report said HMSHost had opened the first Shake Shack at Boston Logan, a 65-seat unit airside in Terminal C, and now worked with that brand at 13 US airports; its other Logan venues included Boston Public Market and Sam Adams Brewhouse. Local names carry a sense of place: the company’s awards page lists Three Kings Public House at St. Louis and, at the 2026 FAB Awards run by The Moodie Davitt Report, Eataly and Brooklyn Tea & Market at New York’s JFK.

Its own mark is guarded. HMSHost’s branding page asks anyone with permission to use the logo not to modify it, not to use part of it on its own and to leave clear space on every side, and it offers the logo files only by authorisation. The tagline on its website is “Feeling Good on the Move.”

For a design guide, HMSHost shows how a concessions company can stand behind hundreds of other brands while keeping its own mark under strict rules. Compare Avolta, its parent since 2023, and Autogrill, its owner from 1999. For this guide we use a deep concourse blue, a warm terracotta and a cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep HMSHost’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.