Lacombe City Council heard a presentation at their January 28th, 2019 council meeting from a catering company out of Red Deer who would like to provide exclusive catering services at the Lacombe Memorial Centre.

They would pay a commission of gross sales for any catering event, where an exclusive right or right of first refusal is given to the City, which would make marketing the LMC for outside events easier.

Lacombe has been hesitate in the past to allow one company exclusive rights to catering at the LMC due to the impact it could have on local groups who have used the LMC on their own for years.

However, as owner of Red Deer Catering Colin Stone explains, their proposal would still allow for those groups to continue their events without disruption.

“We’re proposing that we would come in and offer catering to whomever they (the City) would like us to have the exclusive rights to. We would allow other grandfathered community events to be able to use the place, and then they wouldn’t have to give us an exclusive on it.”

Stone says their company has been in business for over forty years, and wouldn’t even occupy the Centre on a permanent basis.

“We have our own kitchen, and we have all of our own equipment and the ability to cater out of our own kitchen…part of the problem is the LMC doesn’t have a consistent service, a consistent catering service that they can offer people so they have a hard time marketing themselves out to the community where they can offer some conventions and such because there isn’t a full service there. We could provide that, and any new work we would pay a fee for that, and then the town would generate some more revenue that way, and in turn would give us exclusive first right on any new work that would come in, such as weddings.”

Council heard the proposal and took the information to an in- camera meeting, but they ultimately decided to reject the proposal.