Opening Party at Devito on South Beach.  Danny bottom left and Tom Prakas top left.

Paparazzi cameras will no doubt be flashing when Danny
DeVito throws open the doors of his new Italian chophouse in Miami Beach, Fla.

DeVito, who achieved recent
notoriety for his limoncello-fueled appearance on ABC’s “The View”
after a night of drinking with fellow actor George Clooney, is scheduled to
open the swanky DeVito
South Beach
with restaurateur David Manero in February, joining a growing number of
movie, music and sports celebrities putting their investment dollars into
restaurants. As DeVito South Beach
investor Michael Brauser of Boca Raton,
Fla., told the Palm Beach Post
recently: “He likes to have fun, which is what happens in a restaurant.
But his name still carries a great image, and people love ‘clean’
celebrities.”

But for all of the panache a
celebrity can bring to an operation, the trend of partnering with luminaries
can be a double-edged steak knife, where egos and reputations can sometimes get
in the way.

 

For
every successful venture such as movie star Robert DeNiro’s investment with restaurateur Drew Nieporent and chef Nobu
Matsuhisa in the
Myriad Restaurant Group’s Nobu, which
has expanded across the country - there are
flops like Nyla, the Southern-style
eatery backed by pop singer Britney Spears that went bankrupt in 2003 after being open only seven months.

The
secret to success in such ventures, says Lee Maen, partner in Los Angeles-based Innovative Dining
Group, or IDG, is
in “choosing the right people.”

IDG
boasts such celebrities as actress Tori Spelling, producer Brett Ratner, “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest and actor Rob Lowe
among investors in
its restaurants.

“You don’t want people
who will treat the restaurant
inappropriately,” Maen says.
“You don’t want to have someone
with a huge ego who would push the manager out of the way. You want someone who will add value to the restaurant by being there.”

IDG’s
eight restaurants in California and Nevada include four Sushi Rokus in Las Vegas and Hollywood, Pasadena
and Santa Monica, Calif; three Boa
Steakhouses in Las Vegas, Hollywood
and Santa Monica; and Katana in West
Hollywood, Calif.

For
the celebrity’s buy-in, the returns on
investment can be as handsome as a leading man.

“We
price our deals so the investor is going to make about a 33-percent ROI,” Maen explains, adding that IDG endeavors to exceed that. “Sometimes we’ve blown that away,” he says.

The
celebrity-eatery connection is not new.
Herbert Somborn, husband to actress Gloria Swanson and president of Equity Pictures Corp., owned the famed
Brown Derby restaurant, which drew cinema
luminaries and their admirers from
the Silent Age of film well into the
1960s.

DeVito’s project in Miami
Beach joins a long line of star-studded restaurant
ventures. Tom Prakas of The Prakas Group, a brokerage firm in Boca Raton, Fla.,
helped seal the agreement with DeVito. The actor created a company, DeVito
South Beach LLC, to buy about 9,000 square feet of space in a deal estimated at
$1.2 million. The site formerly housed Joia restaurant, and the new concept
will accommodate 200 and include an adjoining patio.

Renovations are estimated to cost $3 million to $4 million,
including outdoor cabanas, an outdoor communal dining table, a street-side
private elevator to a second-floor dining space, and what investor Brauser
calls a spot that will “cater to VIPs and high-end clientele.”

Prakas, president of The Prakas Group, says    Actor Danny DeVito movie stars add a
definite punch to the opening of   will
open DeVito restaurants and help increase sales.

 

“They bring a lot of cash in, just by the use of their
names,” Prakas says, though he cautions that food and service must be high
quality to keep customers returning.

Prakas’ other clients include the South Florida restaurants
Sopra, City Oyster, Tarpon Bend and Gusto’s Grill & Bar.

Not all of the celebrity-backed restaurants have lasted.
Actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone were
investors in the Planet Hollywood chain, which flew high for a time but later
crashed to earth. Bobby Ochs, who worked with Britney Spears on the now-closed
Nyla, also assisted Patrick Swayze at Mulholland Cafe in California
and Maria Maples at Peaches in New
York, both of which have closed.

But the list of celebrity restaurant successes keeps
growing. Actress Jeri Ryan is backing Ortolan in Los Angeles. Singer-actress Jennifer Lopez
opened Madre’s restaurant in Pasadena,
Calif, in 2002. Director Francis
Ford Coppola has Ross & Bianco restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif. Actor Wesley
Snipes owns China One in West Hollywood, Calif. Musicians Nickolas Ashford and
Valerie Simpson better known simply as Ashford & Simpson own the
restaurant-entertainment venue Sugar Bar in Manhattan. “Saturday Night
Live” alum Jimmy Fallon is part-owner of Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction
in the East Village of New York City. Rapper Jay Z owns 40/40 in New York City’s
Meatpacking District. And Ridley Scott, producer Harvey Weinstein and Robert
DeNiro own Ago restaurant in Los
Angeles.

The trend is not isolated to New York
and California.
Hip-hop entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs founded Justin’s
Restaurant & Bar in Atlanta’s
Buckhead neighborhood.

 

figures also have launched their investments in restaurants.
Magic Johnson, Hank Aaron, Don Shula,

Lonnie Moore, left, and Mike Malin, who was a contestant on
reality show “Big Brother,” lead The Dolce Group, which opened Dolce
Enoteca e Ristorante in 2003 with a roster of celebrity investors.

Mike Ditka and Michael Jordan all have added their star power
to eateries. Even sports announcers, such as Harry Caray in Chicago, have turned their names into marquee
draws. One of the most recent stars of the celebrity restaurant firmament is
The Dolce Group, headed by lifelong friends Lonnie Moore and reality television
star Mike Malin. In 2001, they opened a small tapas lounge called Belly on a
strip of Santa Monica Boulevard
in Los Angeles.

“The business, built on equal parts sweat and credit
card debt, became

the entertainment industry’s hangout of choice, thanks to
Malin’s concurrent appearance on CBS reality show ‘Big Brother,’” the
company says in press materials. Malin used his time on the popular show as an
opportunity to promote his business on every episode. As a result, Belly was
packed.

Malin and Moore assembled a slate of famous investors in
order to create Dolce Enoteca e Ristorante on Melrose Avenue in 2003. Celebrity backers
includ ed “That ’70s Show” stars Ashton Kutcher, Wilmer Valderrama,
Danny Masterson and Laura Prepon, as well as Chris Masterson from “Malcolm
in the Middle,” Dule Hill from “The West Wing” and comedian
Jamie Kennedy. Then, Moore and Malin partnered in 2004 with Shereen Arazm to
create Geisha House, a two-story Japanese and sushi restaurant set in Tokyo 2050.

Since then the company changed its name to The Dolce Group
and opened Bella Cucina Italian in Hollywood.
It expanded to Atlanta
with Dolce and a lounge concept to open later this year called Ten Pin Alley.
The group also plans to open Ketchup, a contemporary American restaurant, on
Sunset Boulevard and is considering plans for expansion to Las
Vegas, Reno, Nev.,
Dallas, Phoenix
and Santa Ana, Calif.

On a less grand scale, actor Chris Noth of “Sex and the
City” and “Law & Order” has operated with Steve Walter a
small space for food and entertainment called The Cutting Room in New York since 1999.

“Both Steve and I had a lot to do with the aesthetic of
how the place looks; I even brought in some of my own furniture,” Noth
says. “In a gradually teenage-ified city where hip-hop rules, we wanted to
have at least one place where you could go where that wasn’t going to be the
name of the game; there are so many other places for that.”

The venue also offers serious food. “We have a real
chef,” Walter notes. “Everything is made to order; there are no
frozen French fries.”

The celebrity restaurant owners try to make a strong
statement that it’s the food, not the famous people, who make their operations
truly notable.

Justin Timberlake is one of the investors behind Chi in Los Angeles and Destine in New York City. While many celebrity-linked
spots end up being a bar-scene hangout, Destine at the outset said its food
would be serious.

“This is not a club, this is not a bar, this isn’t a
nightclub,” said Destino’s representative Lizzie Grubman at the time.
“This is a real restaurant.”

Innovative Dining Group’s Maen said Sushi Roku, Katana and
Boa Steakhouse all emphasize their food over the celebrity backers. The former
nightclub creators who started IDG said that when they opened

Sushi Roku 10 years ago, they wanted to create a
“fusion of design, energy, service and food.” The celebrity
investors came afterward, he says.

“We knew a few people among friends from the nightclub
business,” Maen says. “When we were raising money for the first
restaurant, we knew that if they were involved they would bring people and help
add to the marketing.”

That’s one saleable part of celebrity backers, he says.
“They bring their friends,” Maen says. “Having them hang out
there is a good thing for other customers to see and that helps the marketing
and PR. We don’t advertise with them or ask them to advertise for us. We look
at it as if they are making an investment, and we are providing them a return
on that investment.”

One of IDG’s investors, Seacrest of “American
Idol,” has a special interest in restaurants, Maen adds. “Food is a
hobby for him,” he says, “so he’s taken it upon himself to really do
his own thing on the Food Network and magazines. The restaurant has also given
him something back as well.”

One drawback to the restaurant celebrity, Maen says, is that
the operation could “end up with a lot of ‘lookie-loo’ people who want to
see celebrities, and if they aren’t there, they won’t come back.”

One such victim of that syndrome was the Fashion Cafe in New York.

“We don’t do the whole red-carpet-paparazzi thing and
the Star magazines of the world,” Maen says. “But when you have Brett
Ratner come in with Jackie Chan or whoever he’s doing a movie with at that
time, it’s good for all the other people in the restaurant because they can say
they sat next to the star.”

That word-of-mouth publicity is invaluable, he adds.

Maen foresees the future “celebrity” being chief
executives and chief financial officers people who already are celebrities in
the business world. “They can bring as much business as the movie and rock
stars,” he says.

Maen says he might consider partners in other industries,
such as sports.

“If you invest in smart deals, I think you will do
well,” he says.

 

Originally posted 2007-03-13 00:00:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter