A bouncer clad in black stands guard at the door. Sushi knives, dipped in white plastic and encased in Plexiglas, serve as cocktail tables. Huge photos of models with bright red lips cover the walls. Below, stylishly dressed diners indulge on pricey treats such as Kobe beef filets with foie gras and watermelon cucumber mojitos.
Katsuya, at the legendary intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles, is the latest trendy stop in a mini-empire of cool created by entrepreneur Sam Nazarian. The 32-year-old Los Angeles native now has four nightclubs, two Katsuya sushi restaurants—with two more opening this year—and a movie production company (Down in the Valley, Mr. Brooks) under his SBE Entertainment Group holding company banner.
All the Takings
Next? Boutique hotels. Nazarian is opening two over the next year: the SLS in Los Angeles in August and a remodeling of the Ritz Plaza in Miami Beach due to open in early 2009. On the drawing board is a complete reworking of the famed Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, which Nazarian acquired last year along with the investment firm Stockbridge Real Estate Partners. "We're building the Chateau Marmont of our generation," Nazarian says, referring to the legendary Los Angeles hotel that's been the site of countless Hollywood soirées and scandals.
Entrepreneurship runs in Nazarian's family. His father, Younes, is an Iranian-born immigrant who made a fortune starting companies from construction to high tech. Sam dropped out of New York University to launch a wireless telephone company, Platinum Wireless. It's still in business, but Nazarian got bitten by the real estate bug, and then lured into the world of nightclubs. Opening his first venue in 2003, his Los Angeles clubs, including Privilege and Hyde, next door to each other on the Sunset Strip, became famous for attracting the famous, including A-list starlets such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan. Nazarian himself had a cameo on the hot HBO show Entourage last year. And his clubs—especially the tiny, 90-person Hyde—have regularly been featured in celebrity gossip Web sites such as TMZ.com. As for B-listers such as Tara Reid and Bobby Brown, their rejections at the door show up online, too. "We probably got more hits per square foot than any place on Earth," Nazarian says.
Nazarian says his innovation was to treat nightclubbing like a business. Typically, club owners round up money from wealthy investors who want to tell their friends they own a piece of a nightclub. The owners rarely returned much in profits and were quick to move on to the next project. "It was an ego thing for investors," Nazarian says. "They'd be in business for a year, and whether they made money didn't matter." Nazarian sought to change that by running all facets of the business in-house—and treating clubs as a long-term business. Rather than lease his venue out to promoters on certain nights, a common practice in the industry, Nazarian acquired Bolthouse Productions, and several other top club promoters in town. That keeps them from sending their regular customers to other venues—and Nazarian gets to keep all the takings of any given night.