The New York startup won organizers with faster payouts, built-in promotion and pages that keep the host in the spotlight. After processing $350 million in ticket sales, its next trick is harder: making the group chat choose a plan.
Clique Hospitality built a sizable business by making itself less famous than the rooms it runs. Now its venue-making machine is stretching from hidden cocktail bars to a 50,000-square-foot sports pool - and exporting the Las Vegas playbook without copying Las Vegas.
Smith is an Asbury Park-based hospitality group that grew out of a 1990s branding and design studio. Beginning in 2006 with Brickwall Tavern, its partners helped restart a stalled downtown, then built a collective of restaurants and bars - Porta, Pascal & Sabine, Homesick, and Lovesick - that pair scratch kitchens with art-filled rooms. Smith treats hospitality as an instrument of urban renewal, designing, branding, and operating each venue in-house.