What was Wingtip?
How much time do you have?
If you want a self-deprecating, 90-second overview of it, I got you:
The longer story could be a book. From 2002 to 2018, I poured my life into a business I was practically tailored to build: Wingtip.
While the video gives you a tour of the space, it barely scratches the surface of the theater we staged inside our retail store and private club. And when I say "we," I mean a fierce core team of 60 employees—many of whom stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me for over a decade to make Wingtip a legend for our 1,000+ members.
It was at Wingtip that I truly mastered the art of high-end hospitality that doesn't smell like pretension. (Not as easy as it sounds.) It was at Wingtip that I learned:
how to saber Champagne, and also how to teach others how to saber Champagne;
about the ritual of Port tonging;
the history behind the flaming Blue Blazer cocktail…and why most bars don’t serve it (it’s more than just the fire);
the value in remembering the names of members’ spouses, SOs, or frequent guests, their “usuals”;
the necessity of an occasional lagniappe, or "a little something extra," a complimentary gift given by a merchant to a customer.
Wingtip also threw amazing events.
The Annual Sinatra Holiday Party: Hosted every December 12th, culminating on Ol’ Blue Eyes’ 100th birthday with a live performance by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
The James Bond Franchise: A May birthday tribute to Ian Fleming where we worked through the 007 canon chronologically year after year—starting with Dr. No and scaling up the production every time.
The Kentucky Derby: A West Coast celebration so authentic it landed us a feature in Garden & Gun magazine.
The story of Wingtip’s final chapter…is complicated. An expansion to downtown Los Angeles went sideways when a developer botched a $400M project right as lease ink was drying. We’d already invested heavily to scale from one location to two. The financial fallout blew a multi-million-dollar hole in our balance sheet, crammed down our equity, and forced us into survival mode. I stayed on for three years to steady the ship, but with a 3-year-old and a newborn at home, I needed to trade retail chaos for software predictability to support my family.
A rendering of The Bloc, the $400M redevelopment project in downtown LA where the 2nd Wingtip location would anchor one of the four corners.
Wingtip lives on today under new ownership, but ask any former member, employee, or vendor: at its peak, it was lightning in a bottle. I still miss it every day.
But here’s the kicker for marketers: Wingtip was my 15-year research lab for human connection. Today, I take those exact same principles—the theater, the surprise, the flawless execution, the non-pretentious luxury—and package them into high-converting executive dinners for B2B brands. Because whether you're selling custom tuxedos or seven-figure enterprise software, the rule remains the same: people buy from people who know how to set the table.
