"The food at the airport is not ideal, and it is more expensive than usual"

This one really bothers me. The Portland airport mandates all food prices to be the same as at the businesses off-airport locations. As a passenger that makes it really great. As a free-market worshipper I have some concerns about this but it seems to work really well in practice and we get excellent options. Unfortunately, other airports don't rely on free-market competition to result in great offerings either but instead usually have most vendors operated by the same concession company like HMSHost, SSP Group. This gives a captive audience to a quasi-monopolist. It's the easiest situation to avoid a monopoly or cartel situation and foster competition, yet most airports seem to either be operated by people who don't care, crooks or idiots.

> As a free-market worshipper

Free market in a location owned by the government where the government gets to control who the vendors are and what the customers are allowed to bring in? Thats not a free market to begin with.

> As a free-market worshipper I have some concerns about this

But it's the government (via the TSA) that gates not only customers, but also the employees (as they must at least be able to pass through the TSA, though admittedly the bar isn't tremendously high), and at government-owned airports, they control the tenants / shops as well

To call it a free market misses all kinds of behind the scenes details

My local Canadian international airport mandates food vendors and restaurants all be staffed by one food service company. So even though past security we have one of our good local coffee shops, the price is inflated AND also they make terrible coffee from automated machines made by untrained staff.

BER has a regular supermarket before security. It's amazing to grab a regular-priced pastry or snack before or after flying.