LOFTY GOALS

Just as her Co-Chair Emmitt Smith re-wrote the NFL record-book, Gina Puente-Brancato wants to set new standards for the 
Emerging Business Program

Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 11:38am

Super Bowl records are like any other – they’re made to be broken. Gina Puente-Brancato has set her sites on a record she expects to crush in Super Bowl XLV, far removed from the playing field of Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

“I want the North Texas Emerging Business Program to be one of the most successful in Super Bowl history,” she flatly says. “Texans have so much pride. We definitely want people to look back and say, ‘They did it right.’

“We want to provide plenty of points of access for minority- and women-owned businesses to get involved – everything from signing up on our Online Vendor Guide to attending workshops and business development sessions. We’re excited about really getting the word out.”

Detroit in 2006 established the Super Bowl record for participation in the NFL’s Emerging Business Program.

“My goal is to have great participation from across the region,” she says. “North Texas is loaded with talented minority- and women-owned business people. That’s why it’s a big deal to make sure everyone is aware of the opportunities and the steps they need to take in order to participate.”

Puente-Brancato has never shied from setting the bar high. She is CEO/Co-founder of Puente-Brancato Enterprises, Inc. The companies under that umbrella gross $33 million annually and employ over 160 people from North Texas.

Puente-Brancato Enterprises includes two wineries, six newsstands/gift shops and eight different brands of restaurants at the DFW Airport, and all of the currency exchange businesses at the airport. The corporation owns the La Buena Vida Vineyards-Gapevine, a multi-media advertising company and a charter cruise line on Lake Grapevine. Two new restaurant operations will also commence for Puente-Brancato at Parkland Hospital starting Dec. 1 with a projected $4 million in revenues and adding an additional 70 employees to her team.

Last year, Puente-Brancato was honored by the Dallas Business Journal’s inaugural Women in Business Awards program as one of Dallas/Fort Worth’s Most Influential Women.

In 2000, 2007 and 2008, La Bodega Winery (the world’s first and only winery in an airport) won the DFW International Airport Board of Directors’ Retail Concessionaire of the Year Award. Puente-Brancato Enterprises, Inc. was selected as the winner of the Ernst & Young Celebration of Diversity Workplace of the Year Award.

In its December issue, Fort Worth Magazine selected the Puente family as one of the “50 Most Powerful People in Town.”  The only other family included was the Bass family of Fort Worth.

Now she turns her attention to a Super Bowl. With Emmitt Smith, she is Co-Chair of the Emerging Business Program’s Action Team.

“I’ve always been involved in the Fort Worth community,” Puente-Brancato says, “and I got a call from Mayor (Mike) Moncrief about a year ago asking me to participate. I’m excited to have the opportunity to serve on the Host Committee and the Action Team.”

One could argue that Puente-Brancato was born to chair such a committee. She has always bonded with other career women. From the far eastern borders of Dallas to the far western boundaries of Fort Worth, she estimates she has 15 business women with whom she regularly confides.

“Since I work a lot at the airport,” Puente-Brancato says, “I always feel like I’m right in the middle of Dallas and Fort Worth, although my home and my family is in Fort Worth.

“I have a good, close hub of women in the North Texas area that I value. It’s good to share lessons learned and exchange networking. And sometimes we just need a place to vent. Some of my best friends are my business friends.”

She laughs and adds, “We strategize over wine.”

Of her fellow Co-Chair, Emmitt Smith, she says, “I’m super excited about his enthusiasm and his passion, like mine, for the Emerging Business Action Team. I admire how he wants to be hands-on with this group.

“I have a big passion for the spirit of the Emerging Business Program. When you’re able to extend that kind of opportunity to the community, the results and benefits pour more directly into the community. This program is very important, which is why I was very glad to be tapped for it.”

She is Fort Worth born and raised, even earning her Bachelor of Science degree in Broadcast Journalism at Texas Christian University.

And she loves the Dallas Cowboys.

“I am a huge football fan and a Cowboys die-hard fan,” she says. “I’ve always loved Emmitt.”

And just as Emmitt always had a nose for the end zone, Gina had the natural gift for being a career woman.

“I grew up at Southwest Office Systems, the other company that my dad started,” Puente-Brancato says. “I began working there when I was eight-years old – accounting, answering phones in the summer-time. I definitely grew up in what I call the entrepreneurial boot camp.”

Remarkably, Victor Puente started his second major business venture at age 63 in 1989 when he opened the first of three of his newsstands/gift shops in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

That beginning mushroomed into additional newsstand, the currency business, the restaurants and La Bodega Winery – the world’s first and only winery at an airport.

“There are now airport wine bars that are kind of imitating what we’ve done,” Puente-Brancato says, “but we’re still the only winery at an airport. We have the ability to produce wine on site.”

And now she’s got the ability to put on a Super Bowl, too. Right here in her own expanding world of North Texas.