CHICAGO (May 7, 2003) - Walter Dunn of The Coca-Company Company will be honored with the 2003 Mickey Warner Award at the NAC Membership Luncheon sponsored by Nestle on Wednesday, June 11 during the 2003 NAC Convention in San Diego.

The Mickey Warner Award is named after Mickey Warner, the father of the NAC certification program and one of the greatest innovators and educators to ever work in the concessions industry. The award is presented annually to honor a leader in the food and beverage concessions industry. Dunn is the second recipient of the Mickey Warner Award as Shelley Feldman was presented the inaugural award in June of 2002. "We are pleased to honor Walter for his dedication to the concessions industry and are excited to name him the recipient of the Mickey Warner Award," said NAC president Gary Horvath of Ovations Food Services. "His distinguished career is a great example of what Mickey and the award exemplify."

Dunn attended the University of Southern California, majoring in foreign trade and also attended graduate courses at Harvard Business School. His career began as manager of Otis McAllister & Company from 1948-1957 before becoming president of Dunn & Cain Coffee Brokers in 1957. He worked in the coffee industry for five years before beginning with Coca-Cola as director of sales, west coast institutional for the foods division. He left the Coca-Cola Company in 1969 to become vice president of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Los Angeles. Dunn returned to The Coca-Cola Company in 1973 as manager of prestige accounts for Coca-Cola USA.

He served in other capacities at Coke including director of sales, bottler operations and director of national accounts of the fountain department before serving 18 years as vice president of prestige accounts. During this time he dealt with accounts at stadiums, arenas, theme parks, movie theatres and college facilities.

In 1996, he was promoted to senior vice president, office of the chairman at The Coca-Cola Company. Dunn has been with Coca-Cola for more than 30 years, and was responsible for highly visible major accounts and negotiated agreements for the presence and product availability of Coca-Cola. His career has involved extensive work within the concessions industry.

Dunn currently serves as a consultant to The Coca-Cola Company and to EMN8, a company that creates visual electronic order stations for restaurants, movie theatres, arenas and stadiums. He has been involved with the Motion Picture Pioneers and the Variety International Children Charity. Walter and his wife Kay have five children, ten grandchildren and one great grandchild, all of whom are boys.

Mickey Warner (1920-1995) had a passion to give recreational foodservice its professional place. His passion led to the innovation of certification programs, an industry textbook, and an NAC university chair.

In the early 1980's, Warner discussed the idea of funding university-level research and teaching with then-NAC president Shelley Feldman. The NAC Board approved $25,000 in seed money to establish a chair at Florida International University's, School of Hospitality Management.

In 1985, at the age of 65, Warner entered a doctorate program at the College of Education at FIU to perform research in recreational foodservice management. Within two years, he completed all of the required curriculum, passed the comprehensive examination and presented his research topics on the competencies of a recreational foodservice manager to the dissertation committee. He was turned down because of a lack of "body of knowledge."

Not to be defeated, Warner set out to establish a "body of knowledge" by producing an all-encompassing textbook, Recreational Foodservice Management, which is the cornerstone of the NAC certification program today. During the busy summer of 1988 Warner wrote the textbook, established an undergraduate course at FIU, and established a new, one-level certification program for NAC. The next fall Warner represented his request for research to the doctoral committee and was approved.

Warner spent 50 years in the foodservice industry, starting as a dishwasher and eventually working for national contract foodservice management companies.