Marcia Foote, founder and president of Utah-based Your Concierge Connection, has been serving up what she calls “holistic experiences” to retail, mixed-use and other commercial properties for more than two decades, offering developers, tenants and guests distinctive value-adds and support that have kept the concierge firm afloat even in the worst of economic swings. Foote’s son, Anthony Panuzio, joined the team as operations director in 2022. The duo is connected by more than just blood. Each played Division 1 intercollegiate tennis at The University of Utah, both were leaders in their respective Panhellenic organizations there and each became a prolific organizer in jobs pre-dating their concierge careers.

Commerce+Communities Today contributing editor Steve McLinden talked with Foote and Panuzio about how their business makes commercial properties more fun for tenants, guests and landlords alike.

What does Your Concierge Connection do?

Foote: We offer concierge services and event management at shopping centers, office buildings and hotels. We perform the traditional concierge tasks, such as dinner reservations and executive transportation, but go above and beyond that with services like event planning, foot-traffic marketing, social media assistance and custom programs. Property owners realize that tenants find more value in properties that are creatively activated and that customers are more likely to return when properties become bigger attractions. No job is too small, too large or too complex for us.

Panuzio: Our basic goal is to make clients’ lives easier. Whether it’s serving as the face of an event or providing critical support behind the scenes, our aim is to be invaluable to them. Our motto is “always exceeding expectations.”

How did you get interested in the concierge business, Marcia?

Foote: It always seemed to be my niche. I was social director and membership-recruitment director for a sorority of 200 at The University of Utah, where I was a poli sci major. For my internship, I moved to Washington, D.C., and started work for Congressman Ron Packard as a receptionist for political committees, a job that included much event planning. In 1987, I was recruited [for] part-time [work] by a concierge firm serving Class A office buildings, with Cushman & Wakefield and Trammell Crow among our clients. I also worked for a law firm and handled catered lunches [for VIPs] and arranged limos in the days before Ubers.

You learned the concierge business in D.C?

Foote: After my internship, I took a concierge job in a small office building and worked my way up to concierge manager. It so happens the owner of the concierge company had more than 40 contracts, and he was a pilot who flew clients around. He suddenly died in a plane crash during a solo flight, leaving no succession plans, so people started scrambling to grab his contracts. I picked up some, too, which is how I started a travel company called Intercontinental Concierge Corp. We grew to some 90 buildings and expanded to a big Class A office building in Chicago occupied by the Chicago Board of Trade. A few years later, we got active in retail concierge with Tysons Corner and Pentagon City.

Yet, you found your way back to Utah.

Foote: My dad was having heart trouble in Utah and needed a transplant. Pregnant with Anthony, I took leave and came back to Utah to help.  My dad was a financial genius who taught me how to operate a small business. He made sure we had financial statements every month [and] taught us not to grow too fast and to be strategically smart about where we operate a business and that not all money is good money. He was my biggest mentor. I remained in Utah, doing the mom thing and working as a consultant, but kept my D.C. business. Later, I bought a Utah firm called Your Job Connection, the forerunner to Your Concierge Connection, and sold off Intercontinental Concierge. We soon picked up two Salt Lake City retail accounts across the street from one another — Crossroads Plaza and The Gateway center — and picked up an adjoining office tower, too.

You provided concierge services to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002. How was that experience?

Foote: The two center marketing teams there had me pull together a large group to form roaming street teams to serve as downtown Salt Lake City ambassadors. We assisted visitors from throughout the world, representing both the Olympic Games organizing committee and the city. We offered multiple on-site amenities. We staffed The Gateway’s Olympic Fountain — the site of many medal presentations — and the popular Olympics pin-exchange booth, among other functions.

‍Anthony, you were appointed operations director two decades later.  What training did you have before joining your mom’s team?

Panuzio: Actually, I have been with YCC since 2013 [as a teen] doing street-team work and helping my mom out with the business, which gave me a leg up and helped me to excel in my [current] role. I managed ice rinks seasonally while at The University of Utah, was social media manager for The University of Utah men's tennis team, chapter president of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and then intern at [The John and Nellie Wooden Institute for Men of Principle] in Oxford, Ohio. After college, I spent over a year at Nordstrom in the company’s service-experience department.

How did your business fare during the two major financial disruptions: the Great Recession and COVID?

Foote: We got a break coming out of the recession. Vegas had just started crawling out from it when Howard Hughes Corp. took over the Downtown Summerlin project from GGP. YCC was selected to oversee the customer service program for the development, then to work its grand opening in 2014. That was a massive job. We trained 200 people in all on the fundamentals of great customer service. Then, for the five-day grand opening, they had me hire 80 people to be street-team ambassadors. The project was so big we established an on-site command center. We arranged fireworks and celebrity appearances and other events. We still manage the project’s concierge desk.

And COVID?

Panuzio: Like everyone else, it hit us hard, knocking our staff back from about 80 to just six. We had been reliant on busloads of ... tourists and had employed multiple bilingual employees for that, but when international travel was cut off, centers just didn’t need us.

Foote: We were fortunate, however, to have great clients that kept us around for better times. We’ve since built back up to about 50 staffers, and we’re growing. We’ve expanded services to California, Oregon and Idaho.

YCC recently added transportation services? Why?

Panuzio: On a pilot basis, we contracted with a Google-type office complex in Midvale, Utah, called the Zions Bancorp. technology campus. Post-COVID, they were having problems getting people back in. A big issue was that the closest transit stop was about a half mile from the campus, so we established a shuttle system using a brand-new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter luxury van, running from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., to take them there and back. It really took off.

Foote: Workers, particularly those who use transit, started coming back. We give shuttle riders little surprises and delights like food and free event tickets under their seats. Anthony set up a text system so workers coming in early or staying late could contact us for a ride. We decided to fully roll out this service to give all our clients the option of a luxury upgrade for any transportation needs they have.

What other services do you offer?

Foote: At offices and mixed-use properties, we manage concierge desks, we do dinner reservations, coordinate with vendors for dry cleaning or a spa day, arrange floral catering, gift baskets and personal stylists. At retail centers, we do concert series, yoga on the lawn and other recurring events, plus one-offs. We work tenant grand openings and much more. In Las Vegas, where they do a lot of big events and parades, we run the VIP sections and coordinate special guest and celebrity appearances. Retail centers are activating their properties significantly more now post-COVID.

Panuzio: We also hand out swag bags to guests and do such little things as drive a golf cart around, handing out lollipops to kids. We offer guests tourist information, store and restaurant information and references and sell gift cards.

Do you do anything for center workers?

Foote: We’ll go out and pick up food for catered lunches, and we cater coffee breaks and hand out prizes. We set up an employee-discount program for a center’s restaurants, and that helps keep the spend on property.

In addition to the centers already named, what are a few other properties you’ve worked with?

Foote: We did extensive concierge work at Simon’s Las Vegas North and South Premium Outlets. We’ve continued to work with The Collection at RiverPark — a mixed-use center in Oxnard, Caifornia — since doing its grand opening in 2015 and now manage its VIP program for corporate tenant patrons. We’ve been at Station Park in Farmington, Utah, since 2013, done work for The Shops at South Town in Sandy, Utah, and for CenterCal’s iconic Mountain View Village in Riverton, Utah. We’ve done jobs for Coca-Cola, [347 Grille by Coach Shula] and the Las Vegas Golden Knights, among many others.

Tell us a little about worker recruitment and training.

Foote: We’re pretty good at it! We do classroom training, role model training, grand-opening training and other custom training. Anthony calls this our “brand training.” Before an event, nobody goes out to a property unless they’ve been briefed for 90 minutes. If we can’t do it in person, we do a Zoom. The team gets treats and surprises along the way. We want them to feel valued so they, in turn, can add value. We have multiple staffers from Disney, a company that excels at our kind of training. Our annual turnover rate is well under 10%. Most comes from people who are just graduating college.

You have a full-time event staff, but how do you ramp up for big events or double bookings?

Foote: We do 110 to 115 events a year, so yes, we do need seasonal help. We find it by networking with hospitality schools, high schools, colleges, churches, kid's camps and friends of staffers. We get many word-of-mouth references. A lot of retired police serve as our drivers.

Who determines what services you provide? Is it the marketing staff’s ideas combined with yours?

Foote: The centers’ marketing departments and leasing teams will tell us what they’re looking for, and we’ll tell them what we can offer and go from there.

Is there any way of tracking the success of a given event?

Foote: Guest interactions are a good gauge. Say we get 500 to 600 giveaways at an event. That’s a good number. We also look at services we performed, people we assisted, the number of prizes given out, shuttle rides we provided, pictures posted on social media, those types of things. We then provide a detailed report to the center’s marketing manager. The biggest success gauge for us is that centers keep asking us back.

Do customers realize an outside company is representing the property?

Panuzio: Guests assume we’re in-house, but the tenants know who we are and they get how this works. We do wear uniforms, but they’ll say the name of the center, not “Your Concierge Connection.”

Foote: The uniform color schemes change from site to site. In beach-oriented California, for example, our people will wear gold shirts and skorts and white sneakers.

Does YCC do anything that may not meet the eye of retail center guests or tenants?

Foote: One of the most common client requests is [asking us] to help run their websites and do other back-end stuff. We have a specific team for this.

Panuzio: Local marketing and media outreach are others. Plus, we go out on the property and capture sales and foot-traffic reports. We do things to take the pressure off management and marketing teams. This is important at smaller malls where marketing is basically a one-man show.

What’s next for YCC? Any further expansion planned?

Panuzio: We want to expand more on the West Coast and are also looking on Texas and a few other places that we can get to in a day or two.

Any downside to your concierge work, Marcia, as you approach a quarter century in it?

Foote: No. I still love it. Our biggest fault is that we work too hard, seven days a week!