He Built the Most Iconic Cocktail Bar of a Generation. Now Death&Co's Founder is Coming for Boutique Hotels.

About this episode

David Kaplan discusses his journey from art school to founding the influential cocktail bar Death & Co and his new venture into boutique hotels.

Connect with DavidConnect with ZachApply to join the Journey Alliance David Kaplan didn't come up through the industry the traditional way. He went to art school, never tended bar a day in his life, and opened Death & Co in New York's East Village on New Year's Eve 2006 with a vintage cash register and zero business experience. What followed was twenty years of one of the most influential runs in American hospitality — a craft cocktail institution that helped shape how a generation drinks, thinks about bars, and expects to be taken care of.But David was never just building a bar. He was building a brand, a culture, and eventually a company — Gin & Luck — that now spans consulting, multiple Death & Co locations, and his newest venture: Midnight Auteur Hotels, whose first property, Municipal Grand in Savannah, is already turning heads.In this episode, David traces the full arc. We get into the origin story, the partnership drama that stalled expansion for years, why he walked away from a family office overlooking Central Park to raise $18 million from 5,000 individual investors instead, and what it actually takes to scale hospitality without losing the thing that made…

People in this episode

Host: Zach Busekrus

Guest: David Kaplan

Topics covered

• hospitality
• cocktail culture
• entrepreneurship
• boutique hotels
• business expansion

Keywords

• cocktail bar
• hospitality
• entrepreneur
• Death & Co
• Midnight Auteur Hotels
• business
• investment

Sponsors

Journey

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Death & Co, Gin & Luck, Midnight Auteur Hotels

Places: New York, East Village, Savannah

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