Core will be open only to members of an international club that charges initiation fees as high as $100,000. The private club, with existing locations in Milan and New York City, also plans to open at least three public restaurants in the Transamerica Pyramid’s lobby and spire.
Core, a luxury, members-only club with locations in Milan and New York City, is set to open inside San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid in 2023, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. This restaurant will be private, open only to members of an international club that charges initiation fees as high as $100,000.
Members will be able to browse the extensive wine library or head to the spa for a $1,000 antiaging treatment, the Chronicle reported. There will also be a culinary “lab” where famous chefs will cook for members.
Core is bringing these high-end dining experiences to downtown San Francisco, even as many nearby independent restaurants are still reeling from the pandemic, the Chronicle reported. The city is busy trying to revitalize the area as remote work means fewer people are frequenting downtown businesses.
The Transamerica Pyramid is undergoing a $250 million renovation, one of the biggest renovation projects ever in San Francisco, the Chronicle reported.
Several nearby restaurant owners said they don’t feel threatened by the private club even as they’re seeing mixed, unpredictable business, the Chronicle reported. They believe that anything that draws more people to this part of San Francisco is a good thing.
“In order for downtown to return, we need to give people a reason to come downtown,” said Andy Chun of San Francisco’s Sidecar Hospitality group, which runs Press Club, Schroeder’s Restaurant and Pacific Cocktail Haven. “We don’t want to see the streets empty at 7 o’clock.”
Core, meanwhile, is betting big on downtown’s recovery, the Chronicle reported. CEO Jennie Enterprise, who opened Core in New York City in the wake of 9/11, said she hopes the project will “be part of the new renaissance of San Francisco.”
This renaissance, from Core’s perspective, will be led in part by their members, which Core describes as “men and women who generate and search for original perspectives and intellectual challenges,” the Chronicle reported. To get into Core, people must get an invitation from an existing member, pay a $15,000 to $100,000 initiation fee, and then pay annual dues of $15,000 or $18,000 for a couple. If a prospect is deemed a promising “young innovator,” angel investors will cover the initiation fee and the annual rate is discounted to $10,000.)
Core would not share specifics about member demographics, except that they’re evenly split between men and women, or how many people they hope will join in San Francisco, the Chronicle reported. The company counts Anthony Scaramucci, briefly the White House’s Communications Director in 2017, among its New York City members.
Past perks have included access to private events like a Tom Petty concert, a talk with Nobel Peace Prize winners or a Tequila tasting hosted by guitarist Carlos Santana, the Chronicle reported.
Core’s restaurant will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Core Culinary Director Michele Brogioni — whose previous experience includes Giorgio Armani, Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy and the Kremlin’s private caterer in Moscow — said he hopes members will eat there almost daily, so it’s unclear how much they would frequent downtown businesses, the Chronicle reported. Meals are not included in membership fees. Similar private clubs in New York City rely heavily on revenue from their restaurants and bars, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Core plans to open at least three public restaurants in the Transamerica Pyramid’s lobby and spire but declined to share details, the Chronicle reported.
Private clubs and restaurants appear to be growing in the Bay Area. The Battery, which opened downtown in 2013 and has its own restaurant, is expanding to Oakland. A few blocks away, a swanky two-story restaurant with pricey membership options is gearing up to open above the Salesforce Transit Center, the Chronicle reported. The restaurant is public, but people who join SHO’s club — at a one-time fee from $7,500 to $300,000 paid in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — will get perks like priority reservations, private cars to get to dinner and an all-expenses-paid trip to Japan.
While the exclusivity is eye-popping and already drawing criticism, some owners said this isn’t so different from people who use connections to get reservations at buzzy restaurants or shell out for high-end tasting menus, the Chronicle reported.
Downtown’s many fast-casual restaurants — those catering to workers looking for breakfast, a quick lunch and coffee — won’t be competing with restaurants of this scale, the Chronicle reported. But they’re the ones that are still suffering the most, said Laurie Thomas, Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the city’s restaurant industry group.
Many higher-end restaurants with private rooms, meanwhile, are busy with requests for work events, she told the Chronicle. Even the casual Oren’s Hummus has private buyouts almost every day of the week in September that Dreamforce, Salesforce’s massive convention, will be happening nearby, said owner Mistie Boulton.
Sidecar Hospitality’s Chun said his businesses are seeing about 50% to 70% of pre-pandemic sales levels, the Chronicle reported. Foot traffic ebbs and flows with new patterns that can be hard to predict. Tuesdays through Thursdays, when hybrid workers are coming into offices, are the busiest days, he said. But once-lucrative Friday is now the new Monday: incredibly slow.
Many downtown restaurants have also slimmed down operations, opening fewer days or serving only dinner, the Chronicle reported. Perbacco, a power lunch destination a few blocks from the Transamerica Pyramid, now operates five days a week instead of six. But it’s starting to see the return of weekday business travelers with “good expense accounts,” said co-owner Umberto Gibin.
Owners familiar with the expense and headaches of opening a restaurant said they understand the financial motivation of a membership-based model, which can use initiation fees to cover upfront costs, the Chronicle reported. Enterprise said the model’s popularity has grown in the wake of the pandemic for this reason.
“As hospitality companies and restaurant companies got hurt during the pandemic … there was a focus on these annuity membership business models,” she said.
Boulton of Oren’s Hummus also runs EyeSpy, a restaurant consulting company that has evaluated private clubs across the country, including the Battery in San Francisco, the Chronicle reported. Through surveys and focus groups, the company found that members don’t patronize only the club, and that nearby restaurants didn’t feel they were negatively affected.
Despite the fact that the downtown location of her own restaurant has been slower to rebound than her other Bay Area locations, Boulton is optimistic about the future of the neighborhood — and not too worried about the impact of upscale, private clubs, the Chronicle reported.
“I’m not afraid of it,” she said.
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