When we like how the food at a restaurant tastes, we come back for more. And, of course, every new restauranteur hopes diners find their offerings yummy. In the video interview that accompanies this post, I talked to the co-owner of a new eatery – noted gymnast Simone Biles.
Her café is located in Terminal A of George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston, Texas. It’s called Taste of Gold and is themed around celebrating her many achievements. So to be goofy, I asked her how gold tastes, because you may have seen photos of her biting a medal after winning it. And she’s had plenty of opportunities to do so, since her seven Olympic gold medals are the most ever by an American gymnast. Her answer was much deeper than the silly question deserved, metaphorically referencing the qualities that went into earning that medal. She similarly hopes her patrons’ restaurant experience goes beyond ingestion of calories.
“What’s so special is it brings the community together with people, with sports, with traveling, and for a love of food,” she said.
Biles’s husband Jonathan Owens, who will play professional football for the Indianapolis Colts this season, accompanied his wife to the event along with several other family members. He indicated the couple has a foodie streak and expects travelers to enjoy the restaurant the way they do on a date night.
“It’s just relaxing. Whether you’re getting here before your flight and you want to wind down a little and relax, or you just landed from a long flight, want to get some great food, watch a game, or just sit here and relax,” he said.
My friends at Athlete Playmaker Group had asked me to emcee the ribbon-cutting portion of the Taste of Gold grand opening. Biles was clearly excited to dedicate the facility, posing for every photo, greeting the staff, sampling food, and enthusiastically wielding her ribbon-cutting scissors.
“I’m super excited to have this restaurant here in my hometown airport. It is such a dream come true,” she said in her remarks to the crowd of invited guests and some travelers who were passing through the terminal and stopped to check out the proceedings.
APG specializes in placing restaurants co-created with prominent athletes (and, soon, universities) in airport terminals. Biles spent her formative years in Houston, trained nearby, and she and Owens just built a new home in the area.
“The name Simone Biles is synonymous with Houston sports,” said Mark Brezinski, who heads culinary matters for APG and worked with Biles and her team on the menu. “The fact that she’d been so successful, both here and nationally all over the world, is a perfect fit for us.”
Whether one measures Biles’s accomplishments in sport by the numbers or by the obstacles she overcame to achieve them, she clearly has earned the right to be recognized as a great sportsperson, including with a namesake restaurant. But the noteworthiness of Biles’s name on the façade goes beyond just her own medal count.
“The significance is big. I’m the first female athlete with a restaurant in an airport, and I hope this is just the beginning,” she said. “I hope other female athletes get the opportunity to do such, and, hopefully, this is the first of many for me.”
APG has two other restaurants so far with others in development. The first two came in partnership with Dirk Nowitzki (DFW) and Marty Turco (Dallas Love Field), but part of the growth plan includes seeking additional opportunities for women athletes. APG co-founder Derek Missimo has long espoused opportunities for girls and women to play sports, represented most prominently by his daughter Lexi. She luckily had a break in training as a professional soccer player for Dallas Trinity FC and attended the ceremony. But even if they had no predisposition to explore opportunities in women’s sports, today’s business realities might indicate they’d be foolish not to.
“Women’s sports have progressed over the last four years. They’re breaking down barriers and boundaries and doing things we never thought women could do. So it’s really exciting to see. And this is just the beginning for women in sports,” said Biles.
The WNBA and the league’s players just this past week ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that increases the salary cap by more than 400%, a boost made possible in large part by rising attendance figures and larger viewing audiences reflected in new television contracts.
WPP Media research issued this month in their Women’s Sports Playbook showed women’s sports impressions up 79% year over year, with related ad spend going up 69%. The NWSL’s TV audience grew 22% last season over 2024. And Nielsen found viewers watched some 46 billion minutes worth of women’s sports last year via TV, streaming, and out-of-home platforms. Any good businessperson should take note of numbers like those.
To be sure, Houston has had many outstanding male athletes come through their city. One could credibly suggest naming a restaurant after a former Astro, Rocket, Oiler, or Texan (Owens, in fact, played for the Texans a few seasons ago). But it’s also now not hard to make the case that women athletes have just as strong a claim. In Biles’s case, she not only offers a sterling competitive resume, the sport in which she achieved it has significant international appeal. IAH, like many airports, attracts travelers from around the world.
“If she has more restaurants, or other women athletes have more restaurants in the future, it’s just an amazing sign,” Owens said. “And just showing that the trend is going upward.”
The aforementioned WNBA used to have a team in Houston that featured some of the sport’s greatest-ever players. The area had been mentioned prominently as a potential future expansion target, and it now appears the Connecticut Sun will move to Clutch City in 2027. Perhaps in a generation or less, a Comet could join the Space City airport restaurant (or spaceport, for that matter) roster. Or it could be another woman gymnast, an LPGA golfer, or even an Olympic flag football gold medalist.
Gold is used for more than just making Olympic medals. Throughout history, the precious metal has equated to money. In that sense, women athletes have begun to taste it in many sports. They like it, and we expect them to keep coming back for more.
